


There's Only One Rule That I Know Of

by HumbleFarmer



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Kid Fic, Road Trips, Space Pirates, Weird Friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-02-16 04:48:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18684460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HumbleFarmer/pseuds/HumbleFarmer
Summary: Loki, Steve, and Carol embark on a road trip across space to rescue Valkyrie and the Asgardian children who escaped the Statesman. Unfortunately, no one involved is particularly skilled at staying out of trouble.





	1. WARNING: Illegal Gamblers and Pickpockets Operate on This Planet

Carol was more than experienced with flying solo across space, but actually having a crew onboard wasn’t so bad. Sure, they were noisy sometimes, but she liked the company even if she could no longer sing out loud as she bounced from galaxy to galaxy. Plus, Steve picked up on things quickly, and by the end of this quest, she’d shape him into a decent copilot.

“Sure you haven’t done this before?” she asked.

She leaned against the side of the cockpit — the alien technology more familiar to her than any Air Force plane these days — and watched as Steve gripped the controllers and gently guided the craft around an asteroid they would have avoided regardless. Everything in space seemed a lot closer when you were first learning to fly.

Steve’s lips quipped into a wry smile. “Positive,” he said. “Last time I tried to fly something, I put her in the ocean. I wasn’t too keen to try it again.”

“Not a problem out here. There’s nothing between us and the next jump point. I used to do flips just to entertain myself on stretches like this.”

Perhaps they were a tad flippant toward the unspoken tragedies — going down in the ice for seventy years, traipsing across the universe in a desperate quest to save everyone, anyone — but they’d had more than enough with mourning. They grieved every day when half of their friends and families were beyond them, and a madman ruled the world. Now everyone was back, and perhaps their smiles were brittle, but they still smiled.

“Loki, you want to give it a try?” Carol said.

“I will pass, thank you.”

Well, smiles came a little slower to some than others.

Their relatively silent third passenger preferred to crouch over a broken blade and stare into the shard. He had not moved since they started this journey just in case he received another message, and Carol respected determination, but damn, the guy needed to take a break.

She glanced at Steve, but he was staring straight ahead as if a planet or star would pop up out of nowhere. He seemed capable enough though, so she left him to handle the controls and sat cross-legged in front of Loki.

“We already have a heading,” she said.

“It might change.”

“Mine is the fastest ship in the universe.”

“How incredibly presumptuous of you,” Loki said without taking his eyes from the shard.

According to Thor, the jagged blade was the broken piece of a dragon fang carved into a sword, the famed weapon of the legendary warriors of Asgard. Now only Valkyrie remained — the last one, so she decided to keep the name — and she managed to send a message to Loki through the broken piece of her sword or something like that.

“I don’t know a ton about magic. What’s happening here again?” she said.

Truthfully, Carol had picked up a thing or two from her interplanetary travels, but she did not know much about Asgardian magic or whatever Loki used.

“Before the attack, Thor and Valkyrie agreed that should something happen, she would take the children in an escape pod, and Thor asked me to weave a working, so I would be able to find them. Valkyrie had broken part of her sword during the battle against Hela, and she told me to use the blade because — ah, I believe she put it, if I don’t have my sword, there’s no point in looking for us.”

“Not much for sugar coating, huh?” Carol said.

“I was supposed to reach out to her, but I was, ah, occupied,” Loki said, still not quite willing to meet her gaze.

By occupied, he meant pulling strings behind the machine that ultimately defeated Thanos. Carol didn’t know a ton about the Asgardian prince’s background — something about not actually being Asgardian, mixing up with Thanos in a bad way, picking a fight with all the Avengers she met on Earth, faking his own death (possibly not for the first time?), and then teaming up with them to bring down the titan once and for all — which Carol supposed was quite a bit of knowledge actually, but it left her with more questions than answers.

Either way, she could tell he and his brother Thor loved each other even if neither one of them seemed to understand quite how to show it, and Loki miraculously avoided Steve even while sharing a spaceship. To be fair, Steve didn’t quite know what to do with Loki either, so Carol felt a bit like a mediator in her own ship.

“So she reached out to you?” Carol said, and she looked to the blade, but she only saw her own reflection.

“Thor and I planned to contact her soon. We wanted to prepare their way on Earth first, but I sensed distress. I don’t know if she intended to do it or not, but she used the connection,” Loki said.

None of them actually had to voice what a distress signal meant.

“Fastest ship in the universe,” Carol reminded him.

Loki still did not look away from the shard.

…

As they neared the next jump point, Steve let Carol take over the controls. He did not mind the empty space that clearly bored Carol to tears — and flips apparently? — but he wasn’t lying when he said flying made him nervous. Only, doing nothing in a spaceship with Loki always lurking somewhere in the background made him more nervous.

It was ridiculous really. They had fought Thanos together, and no, Steve wasn’t forgetting what Loki had done. He killed good SHIELD agents and destroyed half of New York, and Clint still had nightmares about not being able to control his own body. And even if Thor seemed to hold no grudge, Steve wasn’t going to forget Loki tried to kill his own brother at one point, too.

Still, Steve also understood a thing or two about being backed into a corner with no good options, and from what Thor said, Loki did the best he could with the options he had, and the guy did help them defeat Thanos. Anyone deserved the benefit of the doubt after that.

That didn’t mean Steve felt any more comfortable around him.

He grabbed a protein bar and thought about offering one to Loki. He wasn’t sure he had seen him eat since they started this journey two (three?) days ago, but then he changed his mind. If Loki was hungry, he probably knew more about where the food was on this ship than Steve did.

“You should get some sleep,” Steve said. “I can keep Carol company.”

“Thank you, but I am fine.”

Steve was fairly certain he hadn’t seen Loki sleep since they started this trip either. He suddenly felt a pang of sympathy for Bucky when Steve pushed himself against his friend’s wishes, and that lead to a different kind of pang, which was stupid.

Bucky was fine. It wasn’t like last time when he was beyond him — another casualty in Thanos’s conquest. He and Sam were both in Wakanda where they had built the new Avengers facility, and they were likely filling their days with training the new Avengers and snipping at each other. They were fine, and Steve would be back in no more than a week. Everything was fine.

Nevertheless, Steve was no longer in the mood to pry past Loki’s walls, and he drifted to his bunk. He didn’t regret signing up for this journey — Thor clearly wanted to come, but as Loki insisted, Thor needed to prepare for when the Asgardian refugees arrived — but he was starting to wonder what exactly he was doing here.

…

Loki did not like it, but he understood Carol’s reasoning.

“Look,” she said. “This isn’t my first rescue mission. We need this ship in peak condition in case we need to make a quick escape, so that means we’re stopping to resupply first.”

Steve fidgeted with his suit — thankfully something far subtler than the red-and-blue monstrosity from their first meeting — but he could not quite hide his anxiety at visiting a trade planet. Loki could not bring himself to feel nervous, at least not about that. He just wanted this task behind them, so they could return to following Valkyrie’s signal.

“Do we have, um, money?” Steve asked as Carol guided the ship into port. His eyes widened at the lights of a thousand ships and tall buildings that put even Stark’s engineering to shame.

“Close enough,” Carol said. “Took me a while to figure it out. Different planets have their own currencies, but what essentially comes down to digital units is pretty universal. I have enough to get us the supplies, food, and fuel we need.”

She flipped her rest to show a wristband with an electronic screen not unlike the one Valkyrie wore in Sakaar. Loki half expected the realization to send him spiraling, but Sakaar and the Grandmaster seemed a millennia ago. He had far more recent traumas, and frankly, Loki did not have time for any of them.

Carol shut down the spaceship and activated the protective shield. Once outside, she passed her wristband over the port’s screen, and with a beep, she transferred the units to rent the port for the next three hours. Loki had travelled enough in his younger days to regard the whole encounter with casualty, but Steve’s eyes were wide.

Loki had never visited this particular trade planet, but they didn’t vary much. Merchants aggressively peddled their wares, and shadier business took place in dark corners. Carol led the way as they navigated the labyrinthine streets.

“Food first,” Carol said. “Watch my back. Pickpockets plague every planet.” 

A minute later, she launched into a vicious bargaining battle with a merchant over the cost of fruit.

“You might want to stay close,” Loki advised when Steve’s eyes drifted toward a stall that sold mechanical trinkets.

Steve raised his eyebrows. “I think I’ll be fine,” he said. When Loki did not respond, he continued, “I thought about picking something up for Bucky. He, well…”

As Steve let his sentence trail into nothing, Loki followed his line of sight to where three children crowded around a fourth. They were of an alien race, but the sight was painfully familiar. One of the three larger kids pushed the small child against a wall while the other two jeered.

“I’ll be right back,” Steve said. “Stay with Carol.”

“There’s no point,” Loki said.

“I can’t just stand by and watch.”

He wore a simple black suit meant for stealth, but he was every bit of Captain America as he marched toward the four children. Loki half expected him to pull out a shield from thin air, but instead, he firmly ordered the bigger children to step away from the smaller, and then he kneeled to look the bullied kid in the eyes. He could not hear what Steve asked, but the child sniffled and nodded. The three bullies disappeared into the crowd.

Loki started to turn away from the scene to make sure Carol didn’t become too aggressive in her negotiating and send all three of them into trouble when a pulse of magic made him pause. He pulled the shard of Valkyrie’s blade from his tunic.

Another distress signal, but not the unconscious surge of emotion from before. This time felt more deliberate, and not only that—

Loki’s breath caught in his throat. He hadn’t let himself hope, but he recognized that aura of magic. Still young and raw, the signal did not give him much, but he saw the location as clearly as if the blade had marked a map.

“Hey!”

Carol jerked away from the merchant and balled her fists as if she planned to activate her power, but when Loki turned her way, he saw no enemy. A child darted down the street and melded into the crowd.

She turned to him with fire in her eyes. “What the hell was that? You were supposed to be watching my back. And where’s Steve? Did you lose him? He’s human.”

Loki refused to be intimidated by a human, Kree blood and superpowers notwithstanding, but he found himself the slightest bit relieved when Steve rejoined their group.

“What’s happening?” he asked.

“I told you there were pickpockets,” Carol said. “Some kid just stole half our units.”

Steve furrowed his eyebrows as he glanced to her wristband. “What do you mean?”

“They’re like small flash drives. If they’re close enough, they can transfer units into their own accounts.”

“And you couldn’t stop the thief?” Loki said.

“She was a kid. I’m not going to punch a kid,” Carol exclaimed. “And where were you two?”

Steve recounted how he scared away the bullies, but as he told the story, understanding dawned on his face. “I suppose the whole thing might have been a ploy,” he admitted before turning to Loki. “I told you to watch out for Carol.”

“I never agreed to that,” Loki said, and at their expressions, he decided not to mention the second distress signal. The blade was safely out of sight, and he hadn’t behaved any differently than what they expected anyway. “It shouldn’t take long to track them down and persuade them to return the units.”

Carol sighed and shook her head. “We’re not going to do that. I’m sure the kids needed it, but that doesn’t change the fact that we’re now low on funds.”

Steve and Carol exchanged glances, and Loki had a feeling they wished to talk without his presence. More than likely, they would decide on some noble exchange of services for money — perhaps Steve would take down a gang of bandits, or Carol would search for some lost treasure. Whatever they chose, Loki had no doubt that procuring the funds they needed would take longer than he was willing to risk.

The signal from the shard meant Valkyrie and the children were alive for now, but that might not be true in another day. They needed money now.

“You two finish the shopping. I’ll get us the units,” Loki said.

Carol narrowed her eyes. “Just what do you plan on doing?”

“Nothing too unseemly if that’s your fear,” Loki said with a smirk of his own. “No one will get hurt.”

“No murder, stealing, or prostitution,” Carol said, ticking off the rules on her fingers.

“Honestly, give me a little more credit than that. How unimaginative of you,” Loki said.

Carol stared at him for another heartbeat, but whatever she saw, she nodded. “Fine,” she said. “Steve and I will get us what we need. Show up in two hours with the units.”

“Actually, I think I should go with Loki,” Steve said.

Carol protested at the same time Loki said, “That’s a vastly unwise idea.”

Steve crossed his arms. “If what you’re doing truly isn’t illegal, then you shouldn’t mind my being there,” he said, but Loki heard what he didn’t add: ‘I don’t trust you.’

“If you insist,” Loki said.

…

Steve regretted accompanying Loki almost immediately. He liked hanging out with Carol, and he had a feeling watching her wrangle a decent price out of the merchants would only get more entertaining with time, but there was no way he could trust Loki to abide by the rules, not even the low bar Carol had set for him. He hadn’t even managed to prevent a child pickpocket from stealing their money, and that was in his best interest.

So he followed Loki away from the bazaar, and the planet started to look less like a festival and more like a functioning city though admittedly not the sort of city that welcomed vacationing visitors. Loki walked the streets as if he lived there, and he motioned for Steve to join him inside an establishment called The Wyvern.

“Every town has one,” Loki said.

Steve didn’t understand what he meant until they slipped through the doors and found themselves inside a bar — or at least what he assumed was a bar. He didn’t recognize the drinks, but no matter what planet or time period, seedy taverns looked relatively the same.

“No murder or stealing,” Steve reminded him.

“Who has the time for that? We are on a tight schedule,” Loki said. “Come, let us drink.”

Before Steve could protest, Loki was at the bar, and though he had watched him walk toward the bartender, part of Steve’s brain rejected what he was seeing. Loki smiled, and he made a joke that made the bartender laugh. Before he received his drink, he had already made friends with a small crowd of patrons.

Steve warily joined him, and Loki only smiled as he gave one of his two glasses to Steve. “Friends, this is my traveling companion, Sev. These fine gentlemen here just shared that dinner will be served in half an hour,” Loki said.

“That’s, ah, good,” Steve said though he had no idea what Loki wanted from him. They were here for money, not dinner.

“In the meantime, I believe I’d like a game of—”

Steve didn’t recognize the name, but everyone else at the bar did. They grinned and jeered and pointed Loki in the direction of a table in the back corner. Loki thanked them and gestured for Steve to follow him.

“Whatever happens next, do not say a word,” Loki warned under his breath.

“I really can’t promise that.”

Loki shot him a glare, but he shifted back into his charming persona the moment they approached a table with five men of various alien races. “Mind if we join?” Loki asked, and he flashed Carol’s wristband that Steve never saw him take.

The five men grinned at the prospect of an easy target, and they pulled up two chairs. Loki inserted his between the two biggest men, but he positioned Steve’s just behind him.

“Hey now, we’re all honest people here, but I’m not sure I like your friend there sitting where he can see our cards,” one of the players said.

Steve started to assure the gentleman that he would never cheat, especially not for Loki, but the trickster smoothly jumped in with a charming smile. “Of course, of course, but surely, you would notice if he was whispering numbers in my ear?”

“How do we know you don’t have a psychic link?” another player challenged.

Psychic links were a thing now, too? Sometimes Steve wondered if the world would ever stop surprising him, but then again, perhaps this was on him. He should never underestimate what’s possible anymore.

“Fair enough,” Loki said. “Ah, Sev?”

Steve took a moment to remember the alias Loki had given him and another to understand what he was hinting. “I’ll go sit over there,” he said and moved to an empty table a few yards away.

As he settled himself down with the still full glass of unknown alcohol, he noticed the way Loki turned back to the players with a smarmy smile, and he started to wonder if this had been Loki’s plan all along. Steve could see the game, but he certainly didn’t understand what was happening from this distance.

Was Loki actually planning to gamble their funds back? Even if gambling wasn’t a tad ethically questionable, Steve knew enough about cards — and he assumed they were at least similar on every planet — to be certain Loki’s fellow players wouldn’t take it kindly if he blatantly cheated or even won more games than they thought he deserved.

Steve would’t exactly lose sleep if the five men beat Loki up in an alley for cheating, but Carol needed the money to pay for their supplies, and they didn’t exactly have a lot of time when they first received the distress signal days ago. Loki himself seemed to care about the Asgardian children as much as Thor, so what was he playing at?

Part of Steve wanted to storm back to the table and shake the answers out of Loki, but he remained in his seat and decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. Loki had already surprised him, and maybe he would again.

After they defeated Thanos, everyone involved — the Avengers, the Guardians, various other heroes and reformed villains — held what no one wanted to call a conference but was essentially a conference. It took days, but everyone shared their stories and the part they played in Thanos’s demise, and while much was familiar, far more was a shock. The conference was supposed to open communication lines and put institutions in place to make sure nothing like Thanos again, but the stories were what lingered in their memories from those hazy days.

Steve did not quite know what to do with a worldview that involved Loki saving Jane Foster from Dark Elves (which were apparently a thing, too), faking his own death and impersonating his father to rule Asgard, sending one of the infinity stones to the Collector in an attempt to thwart Thanos, betraying Thor again in Sakaar, and then helping to rescue the Asgardians from Odin’s eldest daughter, Hela. The guy jumped from one end of the moral spectrum to the other quick enough to make Steve dizzy, but regardless of all that, he truly seemed to care about Asgard’s children.

“I’m going. I will go alone, or I will go under your conditions, but I am going,” Loki had said.

As soon as he received the distress signal from Valkyrie, Loki went to Thor. Both Asgardians were staying in the Avengers facility in Wakanda until Thor could find a place to welcome Valkyrie and the children, but plans changed quickly in their business.

“I’ll go with you. We’ll bring them back,” Thor had responded immediately, and Bruce was the one to remind Thor that as the king he was needed to make preparations for their arrival.

Loki insisted that he could go alone, but Thor clearly didn’t like the prospect, and Steve still wasn’t sure what he had been thinking at the time, but a moment later, he was volunteering, “I’ll go with him.”

Within an hour, Carol volunteered her spaceship — “I’m free this weekend” — and T’Challa offered food and fuel, and suddenly, Steve found himself on a rescue mission across space with Loki and Carol.

Steve had given up on an ordinary life anyway.

Now he was watching Loki win hand after hand of cards as the rest of the men glowered. Finally, the largest one had clearly had enough, and he pounded his fist on the table with a deafening thump.

“We castrate cheaters around here,” he growled.

Loki’s eyes widened with faux innocence. “Cheaters? Well I should hope so, but that’s hardly pertinent right now,” he said, and damn, Bucky thought Steve invited trouble.

The thug moved as if he planned to castrate him then and there, but Loki hurried to add, “Of course, if you think I’m cheating, I can prove I am merely talented with cards.”

The largest of the party was unfazed, but the other four men looked intrigued. “Prove it then,” one challenged.

“I’m certain you gentlemen would not ask me to show my hand without compensation,” Loki said. “Perhaps we can have a little fun here as well. I’ll wager all of my winnings — all 563 units — that I can predict the outcome of the next hand down to who will win and the cards they’ll play, and you’ll know I’m not cheating because I won’t even play.”

Now the wager had drawn a crowd, and Loki had been speaking a little louder than normal, hadn’t he? The surrounding patrons looked intrigued, and though the players clearly felt a little uncomfortable at putting 563 units on the line, the pressure of the crowd crumpled their will. All five agreed, and the next hand of cards commenced, this time with Loki merely watching.

Steve realized he should feel stressed that Loki would lose what money he had won for their supplies, but oddly enough, he was more tensed for the fight that would inevitably follow. Loki was undoubtedly cheating, and the largest of the thugs clearly thought fondly of the castration policy.

After an unusually silent game, Loki stood and smiled at the crowd, working them like an actor onstage. He pointed toward the man who had initially challenged Loki to prove his skill. “This clever fellow won the game, and his cards are—”

He listed the unfamiliar names, and the appointed winner looked paler with each one. When Loki finished, he threw his cards to the table, and judging by the noise that erupted from the crowd, he had been right.

Loki smirked, and he operated the wristband to receive the incoming units from the five players.

“Now friends, I believe we have a dinner to enjoy,” he said, and sure enough, the bartender started serving what looked like a roast, but Steve couldn’t guess the animal.

The crowd dissolve into mild chaos as patrons grappled for a slab of meat and refills of ale, and Steve clenched his fists in case one of the players decided to go for Loki, but between one blink and the next, he felt a hand at his arm, and he was suddenly being manhandled through the crowd and out of the tavern.

Back on the street, Steve shot Loki a stern look and brushed his hand away from his arm. “I guess you feel real clever, huh?” he said.

“Usually,” Loki said. “We should return to the market.”

The two of them retraced their steps, but Steve kept looking over his shoulder, half expecting one of the gamblers to trail them with a sharp knife.

Loki apparently noticed because he said, “They won’t come after us. It is wise to plan your biggest win right before a meal. No gambler minds a midsize loss right before dinner.”

“That was a midsize loss?” Steve said.

“For any one gambler, no, but with my previous winnings and the pool from all five, we should have plenty for supplies.”

“Still a risk. Carol said no stealing, and cheating at cards is close enough.”

Loki raised his eyebrows. “How could I cheat? I wasn’t playing,” he said.

“Magic?” Steve said.

“I wasn’t using my magic. Another sorcerer could have sensed it, and then I wouldn’t be able to deny it,” Loki reasoned. “That was card sharping, Captain. If you’re familiar enough with the cards, you can predict any game with mathematics alone.”

“Wait, so you weren’t cheating?”

“Well,” Loki admitted, “I wouldn’t say that.”

Steve decided continuation of this conversation wouldn’t do either of them any good. He was quiet for the rest of the journey back to Carol.


	2. WILDLIFE XING

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Valkyrie needs a nap.

Fueled and stocked, Carol’s spaceship sailed through the last jump point with ease. She carefully navigated the ship through the planet’s atmosphere, but as they neared the surface, Carol turned to Loki, who hovered with Steve over her shoulder.

“Are you sure this is the place?” she said.

Carol had visited plenty of planets in her time, but none quite so… dark. Something in the atmospheric makeup allowed for the nearest star’s heat to make the planet livable, but no light filtered past the stratosphere. When they landed in stealth mode, they saw nothing at all to hint to what lived on this planet.

“The distress signal came from here,” Loki confirmed, but he, too, regarded the darkness with suspicion.

“It doesn’t look like anything lives here,” Steve said.

“Maybe they’re underground?” Carol said, but she shrugged. “Either way, we’ll find out. Steve, let’s get you a spacesuit just in case.”

Loki did not need any extra protection, so only Steve and Carol moved to the back of the spaceship where they stored their gear, and Loki stayed behind to fiddle with his shard. Carol shifted through her paraphernalia — it looked like a mess, but she swore she had a system — and eventually emerged with a flexible mask that would ensure Steve could breathe.

“This ought to do it,” Carol said.

“Thanks,” Steve said, and he slipped the black mask over his head.

“Sure thing. Now what are we going to do if trickster god over there loses it?”

Steve met her eyes, startled, but then grim resignation settled over his face. Carol guessed he had been thinking about this, too.

“Don’t get me wrong, I really hope we find his people, but you and I both know that’s not always how these missions end,” Carol said. “If he snaps, will we be able to handle it?”

“He’s changed,” Steve said. “He’s not like before, but he’s also—”

“Unstable?” Carol supplied.

“I was going to say fragile,” Steve said, and he sighed. “I guess, whatever happens, we’ll do what we have to do.”

Carol nodded. To be honest, she was more than certain she could handle Loki in whatever emotional state on her own, but she needed to know that Steve would back her up if she had to make a hard choice. Reassured, she motioned with her head, and she and Steve returned to their local unstable — whatever Steve said — trickster god.

…

For about the first ten seconds, everything was fine. They exited the ship, Steve could breathe the air through his mask, and then Loki magicked a ball of light to allow them to see, and the creatures emerged with a haunting howl.

As far as Steve could tell, they were hairless monkey-like creatures with large eyes and sharp claws, and they went for Loki’s light as if they were starving and the faint green glow was their first food in years. Loki yelped and cried out when their claws ripped through his clothes and left deep gashes on his arms, and the light flickered out, plunging them into darkness.

Steve heard rustling as the creatures moved, but the howling ceased.

“What the hell was that?” Carol said.

“Loki, are you okay?” Steve asked.

For a moment, Steve only heard Loki’s heavy breathing, but he managed, “Fine. It’s already healing.”

“And the creatures?” Carol said.

“Gone. I’m not sure if they were attracted to my magic or the light,” he said.

“One way to find out,” Carol said, and a moment later, Steve saw a red-orange glow as she activated her powers, and the howling started again.

This time, nearly ten of the creatures launched themselves at her, and Carol blasted them all, but the light only brought more of them to her. She killed that wave, too, in a torrent of molten fire, but Steve watched as the wake drew another hundred of the creatures to her.

Steve moved to join the fight with his shield, but Loki grabbed his arm and shouted, “Stop, you’ll just bring more of them.”

Carol let her power fade as she ducked away from where the creatures coalesced, and as the darkness settled over them again, the howling quieted into silence. Steve almost wanted to shake off Loki’s hand, but oddly enough, the touch of another person was grounding when he knew the creatures were out there, waiting.

“Carol, where are you? Are you okay?” Steve called. Perhaps the creatures were deaf because none encroached on them.

“None of them touched me except at the end,” Carol said, and her voice was right next to them. “How the hell are we supposed to find the kids if we can’t use light?”

“We’ll kill them first,” Loki said.

“Wait,” Steve interrupted before either one of them could start glowing green or red. Miraculously, they listened to him, and for half a beat, no one moved or said a word. “Maybe we should think this one out. Can either one of you use your powers without light?”

“I’ve never tried, and now doesn’t seem like the time to experiment,” Carol admitted.

“Nothing that could kill them all,” Loki agreed, but his voice sounded distant as if he was already far beyond Steve and his primitive planning.

Steve wished he could level the two of them with one of his patented looks, the ones that inevitably made everyone fall in line, but one, he couldn’t see them, and two, he was fairly certain the look wouldn’t work on Carol or Loki anyway. He just had to hope they would listen.

“Okay, Loki, can you make that ball of light again but keep it somewhere far away from us?”

“I am not a child,” he said.

“Good, and Carol—”

“Already ahead of you,” she interrupted. “Loki, you send them in one direction, and I’ll blast them.”

Loki removed his grip from Steve’s arm, and they were standing close enough that he could feel when Loki moved his hands in a way that he assumed weaved the spell, and a moment later, a plume of green fire appeared a sprint away from them. Immediately, the creatures dove toward the light in a crescendo of shrieking, and Carol followed with a blast of her own.

The creatures disintegrated, and as more of them drew toward Loki’s light and the wake of Carol’s power, she sent another wave of energy. Over and over again, creatures came, and Carol destroyed them until silence swept over the planet.

Loki let his spell fade, and then he magicked a ball of light among them, and Steve actually saw the faces of his teammates for the first time since starting this mess. No creature launched itself at them.

“Well, that was easy,” Carol said.

“You’re the one still bleeding,” Steve said.

She glanced down to where the creatures had left long scratches on her arms, and she shrugged. “This is nothing.”

Steve shook his head, but he couldn’t really protest. He distinctly remembered brushing off injuries on more than one occasion, and either Bucky or later Sam or Natasha glaring at him with the same exasperation he felt welling inside of him now.

“Let’s at least wrap them,” he suggested.

Loki held the light, and Steve sprayed Carol’s scratches with a special disinfectant Bruce and Tony had developed to counter alien pathogens, and he wrapped her arms with gauze. He carried a lot more medical supplies these days when Loki could store almost anything in his pocket dimension.

“Shall we?” Loki suggested once Steve was satisfied with Carol’s tended wounds. Loki’s scratches had already healed.

“Do you know where we’re going?” Carol asked.

Loki nodded, and with the hand not holding his enchanted light, he pointed with the shard. “I received a stronger signal yesterday, and I can sense magic from that direction. We should approach cautiously though. Valkyrie will not react kindly if she thinks they’re under attack.”

The three of them trekked across the barren planet with only Loki’s light and direction to guide them.

They walked slowly with all their senses on high alert, but the silence still felt strange between them. Steve had been on plenty of missions with Natasha, Sam, and Bucky, and most of them required silence at one point or another, yet none had felt so … awkward.

“So Valkyrie, is she like you and Thor?” Steve asked.

“I assume Thor told you her background,” Loki said. “She is stronger than most Asgardian warriors and far more experienced. If you are asking after her prowess in battle, she is more than capable.”

“That wasn’t—”

“Then why wasn’t she helping with the fight against Thanos?” Carol asked, but her tone wasn’t accusatory — only curious.

“We realized early that we only had enough escape pods to transport the children and one adult. Valkyrie begged to fight Thanos instead, but she was the only one we trusted to protect all the children by herself,” Loki said.

His voice was distant as he focused most of his concentration on following the magic aura, and Steve guessed Loki would not have been quite so blatant in his admiration otherwise. It was almost sweet though, and Steve wondered if Loki and Valkyrie were actually friends. That was a strange thought.

“We’re here,” Loki said.

Ahead of them, the darkness rose into cragged mountains, Loki’s light illuminating the sheer slab of rock.

“I’m going to guess there’s magic or something like that happening here,” Carol said.

“Something like that,” Loki muttered.

His hand hovered over the stone, but he did not let his fingers touch. He murmured to himself until he apparently found something to his satisfaction though it all looked like black stone to Steve. There were times when super strength and stamina seemed like pale comparisons to the skills of those around him.

Loki stood, and he addressed the rock.

“It’s okay. We’re here now,” he called. “It’s Loki and two warriors from Midgard. Thanos is dead. Thor is alive and well. We’re here to take you home.”

Steve and Carol exchanged looks, and though Carol did not say a word, Steve knew what she was thinking. Was this the moment when they would have to contain Loki? He wanted to believe the Asgardian refugees were here, too, but talking to a mountain was not promising.

Just when he was about to start speaking to Loki in a slow, gentle voice, the air around them shimmered.

“Prove yourself to be who you are, Loki of Asgard,” a ghostly voice commanded.

Loki waved his hands, and the green light shifted into the shape of a horse and galloped around them. “This is the trick I would use to entertain the children each night on the Statesman,” he said.

This time, when Steve and Carol met eyes, there were a lot more furrowed eyebrows and mouthed questions involved.

“Not good enough,” the ghostly voice replied, but this time, the tone held a different cadence. “Tell me something I know you never shared with another soul. What happened after the Grandmaster ordered you and Valkyrie to find Thor?”

Loki pressed his lips together. “Valkyrie—”

“Answer the question.”

Loki sighed, and he practically hissed his answer through gritted teeth. “You defeated me in a fight and chained me in your room.”

Before Steve or Carol had a chance to react to that piece of new information that was most definitely not included in Thor’s report, the air shimmered again, and the rock faded into a cave opening. His arms crossed, Loki waited with considerably less hope and good will than a moment ago.

Then a woman with long tangled hair and bare feet practically stumbled into view. She locked eyes on Loki.

“Tell me you have something alcoholic on you,” Valkyrie said.

…

Carol introduced herself — “Hi, I’m Carol, mostly here as designated driver. We haven’t met, but I’m glad to see you’re alive and all.” — and then she left to get the spaceship. With a nod of her head, Valkyrie welcomed Loki and Steve into the cave, and with torches mounted on the stone walls, Loki let his green light flicker into nothing.

“It’s a bit of a walk. We kept burrowing deeper and deeper,” Valkyrie explained when they turned another corner that only led to more tunnels.

“Why did you send the distress signal?” Steve asked. “Is everyone okay?”

“Everyone’s alive,” Valkyrie said. “Okay is a bit of a debatable point. We crash-landed on this planet however-long-ago — haven’t really kept track of the time — and at first everything was fine. We noticed the creatures right away, but we learned to just keep everything dark at night.”

They turned another corner, and the torches became more frequent. Steve could see the stress and worry of Valkyrie’s tale in the lines of her face though her tone betrayed nothing. She reported the events as any good soldier did to her commander.

“We scavenged for food, and I hunted small game. Then as the days got shorter, the nights got longer. Something was changing in the atmosphere. We retreated to the caves when we realized the light wasn’t coming back.”

“The distress signal?” Loki asked.

“Kari,” Valkyrie said, and they shared a look that Steve couldn’t begin to interpret. “I told her there was no point. You guys would come for us when you could, but we’re running out of food, and some of the younger kids are getting sick. She took my sword when I wasn’t looking, and I’m guessing that you heard her.”

“We should have come sooner,” Steve said. “I’m sorry.”

Now that he knew what to look for, he noticed the signs. She was thin, yes, but her skin was dull and sallow, her hair dry and brittle. She had likely stopped eating long ago to preserve rations for the children.

Valkyrie shrugged. “I’ll kick Lackey’s ass later. For now, your ship better be well-stocked and big enough to get us all out of here.”

Loki pressed his lips together, but Steve imagined guilt prevented him from retorting. At the time, the decision to first make arrangements for New Asgard made sense, but deep in this labyrinthine cave with monsters waiting outside, they clearly should have come here first.

“Now I assume if you’re here, then the nightmare is dead,” Valkyrie said.

For the rest of the walk, Loki gave a very condensed version of how he faked his death one last time in order to warn the heroes on Earth of what was coming. They still hadn’t been able to stop the Snap, but they gathered who remained and used the quantum realm to travel back in time to retrieve the infinity stones and use them to defeat Thanos once and for all before returning them and eliminating any alternative timelines.

“I guess you can make friends after all,” Valkyrie said when he finished with a side-eye toward Steve.

“So it seems,” Loki said.

A strange look passed his face, but before Steve could look closer, they turned the last corner, and the tunnel opened into a well-lit cavern. Children from ages three to late teens gathered in small groups — some playing a game with stones, some drawing on the walls with their fingers, some sleeping.

The moment they entered the room, everyone turned to see them, and several jumped to their feet, stunned into shocked silence. Except for one.

A little girl with bouncy black curls practically lunged at them as she cried, “Loki!” She wrapped her tiny arms around him, and after a moment, he awkwardly patted her back.

“You heard me,” she murmured into his chest.

“I heard you,” he said softly. “Both times.”

“Good news, kiddos,” Valkyrie said to the rest. “We’re getting the fu— um, heck out of here.”

Most of the children still looked confused, but a few of the older ones exchanged excited looks. A boy who looked around fifteen started gathering up what little supplies they had, but the toddlers didn’t stop staring at Steve and Loki. Really, most of them kept stealing glances at them.

Feeling awkward, Steve offered a small wave, and a toddler with his thumb in his mouth waved a chubby hand back.

“You can introduce yourself,” Valkyrie said. “You should probably warn them about the other one, too.”

“Oh, sure,” Steve said before he turned to the children. “Hi, I’m Steve Rogers. I’m from, ah, Midgard. We’ve come here to take you back with us. There’s also another warrior from Midgard — her name’s Carol — and she’s gone to get the ship.”

“Weren’t you a performer at some point?” Loki commented.

Steve glared at him but stopped when he found the little girl still wrapped around his waist. His expression softened, and he kneeled to better look her in the eyes.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Kari,” she answered.

She glanced up to Loki, but when he said nothing, she slowly pulled away from him and stuck her hand out to Steve. “I’m Kari, daughter of Volstagg,” she said.

Steve gently took her hand and shook it. “Nice to meet you, Kari. I’m Steve, and we’re going to get you all out of here.”

“All right, kiddos, just like we practiced,” Valkyrie said. “Get in your groups.”

With a discipline Steve tended to see in veteran soldiers, the kids organized themselves into five groups of four with each group including an older child, a toddler, and two somewhere in the middle. Only Kari remained, the twenty-first child, and she took Loki’s hand. The trickster god widened his eyes, but he also didn’t pull away.

When she noticed Steve staring, Valkyrie shrugged. “We’ve had a lot of time on our hands, and we didn’t know what this rescue would look like.”

“This is better than we could have hoped,” Steve said.

“Sure, but I wouldn’t celebrate yet. There’s still a horde of monsters outside. Do you have a weapon?”

Steve held up his shield, and she shook her head. She rummaged through one of their few bags of supplies and pulled out what looked like a small handgun and shoved it into his arms.

“Projectile weapons are key out here,” she said.

…

Loki held Kari’s hand during the entire journey back through the tunnels. He and Steve led the way, and Valkyrie stayed at the back to make sure no child was left behind. They made a surprisingly quiet caravan for twenty-one children and three adults, but Loki supposed they were all painfully aware that they were not rescued yet.

Carol had landed just outside the cave opening, but she’d already told Steve through their ear pieces that more creatures were coming, attracted by the lights of the spaceship.

As they neared the cave opening, Loki murmured, “If you will make sure all the children board, I will hold off the creatures.”

Steve nodded. “I can do that. Are you sure you can take them all on your own?”

“I can help,” Kari said.

Loki glared down at her and squeezed her hand, firmly but not enough to hurt. “No, you will board with the rest of the children.”

“But I can—”

“No, you will not.”

Her face fell, but Loki refused to feel guilty. He was not about to risk any of the children just when he’d gotten them back.

They heard the howling long before they saw the lights of Carol’s spaceship. Loki met Steve’s eyes, and with silent agreement, Loki went ahead to the opening of the cave. The creatures scurried around the spaceship, clawing into the metal in search of the blinking lights, but Carol held the aircraft steady.

With a wave of his hand, Loki made the plume of green fire appear far away from the spaceship, and immediately, the creatures descended on the light. With his other hand, Loki tried to destroy as many as he could, but without Carol’s help, they kept multiplying.

No matter, he reminded himself. He only needed to hold the creatures’ attention long enough to allow the children, Valkyrie, and Steve to board the ship. He dared not glance over his shoulder when the green fire required all of his concentration, but he heard the ship’s bay creak open and the pitter-patter of tiny feet traipsing up the metal ramp.

“Loki, we’re almost there,” Steve shouted over their inhuman screeches.

“Take your time,” Loki shouted back, gritting his teeth as he sent another wave of energy into the fire.

A few of the creatures were starting to grow bored with the stationary light, and Loki picked them off with knives one by one, but he only had one free hand. One ignored his efforts and lunged for the spaceship, and Loki only managed to strike him in the heart with a blade at the last moment. The body fell to the ground, twitching.

“Captain?” Loki called.

“Just a little longer,” Steve said.

The few wayward creatures were growing in number, and now a small tribe made for the ship. Loki conjured enough daggers to end them all, but his plume of green fire flickered.

The light was only gone for a moment, yet half of the creatures jumped for the spaceship, and Loki let the light fade entirely to blast the wave of creatures with a sheet of green fire. He incinerated the first wave, but one stretched its long claws for Loki’s throat.

He closed his eyes, but a laser shot the creature away, and only a thin red line hinted at what almost was.

Steve stepped forward, and he fired his gun again, apparently finding himself at ease with Valkyrie’s gift. Instinctively, Loki guarded his blind spot and sent a flash of green fire again, taking out the next wave of creatures.

“Ready to leave?” Steve said.

“Just when we were having fun,” Loki said though the quip came out strained and breathless.

Above them, Carol started to lift the spaceship from the ground, the ramp dangling at waist level.

“Now,” Steve shouted with a last blast from his gun, and they both dived for the ramp.

They had to have killed hundreds of the creatures, yet the howling was louder than ever. Loki felt their claws on his legs and arms as he moved for the ramp, but he could see more of them heading for Steve in the dying light.

Without more than a few scattered thoughts — human, vulnerable — Loki twisted his body to shove Steve up the ramp first, and the noble captain immediately grabbed Loki’s arm to pull him the rest of the way. They fell back against the ramp, breathing hard, as the howling faded.

“If you two are done with your nap, Carol wants to close the bay,” Valkyrie said.

Loki started to retort when a hiss of pain interrupted him. Steve was already moving to clear the ramp, but Loki looked down to find a long, bloody gash from waist to ankle. Silently cursing, he murmured an illusion into place before also stumbling to his feet.

“The kids?” Loki said.

The three of them climbed to the mid-level as Carol finally closed the bay. The moment the metal slid into place, she shifted into a different gear, and they rocketed out of the atmosphere of the damned planet.

“All here,” Valkyrie said. “See for yourself.”

Loki almost didn’t get a chance because the moment they arrived in the main pod of the ship, Kari practically leaped at him. He bit down a whimper as she jostled his injured leg, but her smile was too bright for him to scold her now.

“You saved us,” she cried. “We’re finally going home.”

The last sentence barely had time to strike before the other children joined in with shouts of victory and the laughter of those who did not think they would have a reason to laugh again. Unfortunately, the noise startled some of the younger children, and a few sniffles joined the mix.

“We should probably get them some food and water,” Steve suggested.

“Way ahead of you,” Carol said, and she arrived with a tray of fruits, nuts, and juices.

With the help of the older children and Valkyrie’s commanding voice, they persuaded the children to sit in groups while Steve and Carol passed out carefully-measured portions. They were conscious of the obvious malnutrition, and while none were medical experts, they knew enough to slowly work the children back up to a full diet. Valkyrie was only allowed sips of juice and a few nuts at first, and Loki was almost concerned when she didn’t protest.

Then again, she was clearly exhausted. Now that the children were safe, what was left of her energy practically dissipated in front of them, and Steve guided her to a cot. She did protest then, but Steve assured her that she deserved a few hours of sleep. She passed out mid-sentence.

After eating, most of the children followed, and Steve and Carol arranged them on cots with plenty of blankets and pillows. Only a couple of the older children managed to stay awake, and Carol immediately took to them.

She asked their names, their interests, and she jumped at the chance to show a few interested parties around her ship.

Only Kari stayed close to Loki’s side, even when he hinted that she could probably use some sleep as well.

“I’m not tired yet,” she insisted.

“You should not lie to the god of lies,” Loki said.

“I’m not though,” Kari said. “We slept for months. Something’s finally happening.”

“I’m afraid a journey through space may not be as exciting as you think.”

“It beats hiding in a cave.”

“Do you know any card games?” Steve asked, joining the two of them in their corner of the ship.

The three of them sat cross-legged a short distance from where the others were sleeping. Carol had taken the older children to the cockpit to show them the wonders of space navigation and piloting.

Kari stared up at Steve with wide eyes. “A few,” she said.

“I have trouble sleeping after something like this, too,” he confided in her with a gentle voice. “Sometimes it helps to play a game.”

He pulled out a deck of cards from his bag — apparently full of more than weapons and medical supplies — and he fanned the deck to show her the symbols.

“I’m afraid I only have cards from Midgard, but I can teach you a few games if you like,” Steve offered. When Kari nodded eagerly, he turned to Loki. “You should join us, too.”

Loki opened his mouth to craft a careful excuse, so he could find a moment of privacy to clean his wound, but Kari stared up at him with such hope in her big eyes that the response died in his throat.

“I cannot promise I won’t cheat,” he warned, but Steve just smiled as he started to shuffle the deck.


	3. CAUTION: Kids At Play

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first fight, blood, and alcohol — but it's actually the best day Valkyrie's had in a while.

The first fight broke out within twelve hours of takeoff.

“She’s small! She doesn’t need that much food!”

“That doesn’t mean you can take food from her! That’s stealing!”

Steve carefully put himself between the two children and kneeled so that he looked them both in the eyes. “Hey, hey, there’s no need to shout,” he said in his gentlest voice.

Valkyrie was still sleeping, and he did not want to wake her at any cost. She was terrifying enough without disrupting her much-needed rest. He might have sought out Carol, but she was adjusting the ship’s course, and he tried not to bother her when navigation was at stake. As for Loki, Steve didn’t know where he was, and he suspected Loki might escalate any existing conflict anyway.

“Hans stole Anya’s breakfast,” Kari said, fire blazing in her eyes. Her tiny hands balled into fists, and for a moment, Steve thought he saw purple sparks.

“She’s half my size,” Hans cried. “She doesn’t need it.”

Hans looked to be a growing boy of eleven, and he was tall and broad though Steve suspected that was not unusual on Asgard. In comparison, the girl who must be Anya shrank behind Kari, and she did indeed look no bigger than a six-year-old. Kari was nowhere near Hans’s height and breadth either, but her sheer fury seemed to give her a few extra inches.

“Listen, there’s no need to fight over food,” Steve said, and he put a hand on Hans’s shoulder. “We have plenty for everyone, and if we get low, we have enough units to buy more.”

“We ran out of food last time,” Hans grumbled.

“That’s not going to happen again,” Steve said.

“You don’t know that,” Hans hissed.

Steve swallowed a promise that he would make sure none of the children would ever run out of food again. As much as he wanted to swear it, these kids had seen too much to believe placating sentiment. Hela had held Asgard in a tyrannical chokehold, and then Loki had been forced to destroy the realm to save them. As if that was not enough, Thanos had killed half their people, and only the escape pods had saved them.

Valkyrie had done her best, but even she couldn’t help that they’d crash landed on a hostile planet.

“Don’t steal food from others,” Steve said. “If you’re hungry, then ask one of us, and we’ll get you something.”

“I’m hungry,” Hans said.

Steve gave Hans and Anya a protein bar each, and when he asked the rest of the children if they also wanted some food, he ended up handing out a few more. By the time he finished, only Kari still acted upset by the altercation, and he kneeled next to her.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Protein bar?”

He offered the brightly-colored package, but Kari shook her head. She glared at Hans from across the room while he played a game with handmade cards.

“It’s not right. He only picked on Anya because he knew she wouldn’t say anything,” Kari said.

“You’re right,” Steve said. “That’s not okay, and you were right to stand up for Anya. You should always stand up for people when they cannot fend for themselves.”

“Then why don’t people like Hans ever get punished? You just fed him, and that’s what he wanted,” Kari said.

Steve shifted, so he was sitting cross-legged in front of Kari. “Because life is complicated, and sometimes people hurt others when they’re scared or hurt themselves.”

“Doesn’t make Hans right. And he definitely doesn’t deserve more food when he stole it,” Kari grumbled, crossing her arms.

“No, it doesn’t,” Steve agreed. “But things like this— it’s not always about what people deserve. Sometimes it’s about compassion and second chances.”

“You’re strange,” Kari said.

“Maybe so,” Steve admitted.

His time as a wanted criminal had given him plenty of opportunity to reflect on what doing the right thing meant. He had always considered himself a person of strong moral backbone, but when the entire world was telling him he was wrong, it was hard not to wonder if he was still acting as a human motivated by morals and virtue.

In the end, the answer was actually simple. He wasn’t going to become a weapon to do harm, and he was going to use his gifts to help people. Sometimes the people he helped had done wrong previously in life, but he was not going to change anything by treating them badly now.

“Why don’t you play a game with Anya? You could teach her some of the Earth games we played yesterday,” Steve suggested.

Kari resisted, but the anger slowly drained out of her as the prospect of a game became more appealing than seething in anger. She took Anya’s hand, and the two girls found a corner to themselves.

Steve smiled as he watched Kari badly explain rummy to the little Asgardian, and then he left the children to their games. He made his rounds, checking that Carol didn’t need anything in the cockpit, that Valkyrie was still asleep. He saw no sign of Loki, and unease creeped up the back of his neck.

His idle walk turned into an active search as he examined each space of the ship. There were not many places to hide, so Loki shouldn’t have been able to escape notice for long, and after a few minutes, Steve started to mildly panic. Had he left the spaceship somehow? Why?

Before his mind could entertain that line of thought for very long, he heard a low groan, and a new kind of fear filled him. He was in the engine room, and there was no reason for anyone to be down here.

“Loki?” Steve said.

There was silence, and Steve stepped forward, ducking below some pipes. He waited for Loki to confirm his presence or protest, and when neither happened, he took another step.

“Loki?”

Steve saw the blood first, a few drops leading to where Loki leaned against the wall. Then his eyes fell to the open gash in Loki’s stomach.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Steve hissed as he practically collapsed to his knees to get a closer look at the wound.

“Hello, Captain, I’m afraid I’m not prepared to entertain at the moment,” Loki said. Then he made another stitch in his wound with thick black thread.

“What happened? Was this—” Steve took a deep breath and continued in a hushed voice, “Was this Valkyrie?”

Loki swallowed what might have been a laugh if he had allowed it. “No, but I imagine Valkyrie would be honored by the assumption,” he said. “I’m afraid the light-fearing creatures beat her to it.”

“You’ve been hurt since we rescued the kids? Why are you just now wrapping your wound? Can’t you use magic?” Steve asked.

He reached out as if he planned to help Loki stitch the wound, but then he froze when Loki gave him a strange look. Steve took back his hand, but he felt useless as he watched Loki continue to thread his needle in and out of his own flesh.

“I’m afraid healing magic is a complicated field that I did not study with the needed dedication,” Loki said.

“So that makes you qualified to give yourself stitches?” Steve said.

Now Loki was less amused when he looked up from his work to meet Steve’s eyes. “I am not human, Captain. The wound will heal. I just need to provide a little, ah, encouragement,” he said with a nod toward the needle and thread.

Steve shifted his position and crossed his legs. Now that he saw Loki was not in immediate danger, he could relax, but the situation still bothered him. When the Avengers had finished with a mission, they had tended their wounds together. It had almost been a bonding experiencing — bickering and laughing over the highlights as they stitched up cuts and put bones back into place.

Even during World War II, the medic took care of his men while Steve had often kept them company. If Bucky had been the one injured, Steve wouldn’t leave his side.

There was something sad about Loki waiting until everyone was occupied to sneak down to the engine room.

“I assure you, Captain, you may return to your duties,” Loki said.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Steve asked.

“I believe I can handle minding a wound,” Loki said. “I am a few centuries older than you, and I have some experience.”

“Sure, I don’t doubt that, but it can’t be comfortable down here. Do you want to move to the bedrolls?”

Loki glanced up to the ceiling as if he could see through the metal to the children above. He grimaced though Steve didn’t know if he didn’t want the children to see him in a vulnerable state or if he didn’t want tiny fingers anywhere near his injury. Both would be perfectly valid.

“I believe I’ll stay where I am,” Loki decided. “You are welcome to return to the children.”

“I just left them,” Steve admitted. “I had to break up a fight between Hans and Kari. Hans stole some food from Anya, and Kari was defending her.”

Until now, the atmosphere had been relatively relaxed despite the fact that Loki was stitching an open wound, but with Steve’s words, he tensed. His eyes searched Steve’s face as if he could determine more from looking alone.

“What happened?” Loki said.

Steve shrugged. “Nothing really. I stepped in before anything could really happen, but I did give everyone some extra food rations.”

Loki relaxed, and he returned his attention to his stitching. “I see.”

He waited for Loki to continue or explain why he had tensed, but he finished with his wound and tied the thread into a knot. He started to lower his tunic, and with a slip of fabric, nobody would be able to guess that he was injured.

“You seem protective of Kari,” Steve said carefully.

“She has attached herself to me despite warnings against it,” Loki said.

He stood, and he was clearly pained even as he took a deep breath and forced himself to straighten. Steve stood as well, and he almost wanted to steady the other, but he knew the gesture would not be appreciated.

“Warnings against it?” Steve said.

“My misdeeds are known to Asgard, and some have understandably cautioned the children to give me a wide berth.”

“I mean, you helped to rescue them from Hela, and you fought with us against Thanos. Besides, Thor wanted you to come save the children, so he must trust you to do that.”

Loki shook his head, but he also didn’t protest when Steve walked with him to join the others.

…

Valkyrie woke when a two-year-old curled into her stomach. She tensed at first, instinct screaming at her to draw a knife, but after so long with the children, she knew better than to react first, and she eventually relaxed. The little boy nestled further into her, and Valkyrie patted his back.

“Hey, kid,” she said.

He tugged at her shirt.

“Are you hungry? Thirsty?” she asked.

The kid shook his head, and Valkyrie pulled him onto her stomach. He smiled down at her.

“What do you need then?” she said.

“Play,” the kid said.

Valkyrie sighed, but she pulled herself into a sitting position and maneuvered the kid to sit in front of her. They had all played every Asgardian game in existence during their stint in the cave, and they had come up with a few of their own, too.

“We’ll play swords, hammers, and lightning. Do you remember the rules?” When the kid shook his head, Valkyrie continued, “Swords ground lightning, hammers break swords, and lightning shatters hammers.”

They played a few rounds, and the kid was winning three to two when Carol walked into the room.

“You’re awake,” she said. “Oh, I’m sorry, I told the kids to leave you alone, but I guess this one slipped by me.”

Valkyrie turned, her hands frozen in mid-sword. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “They’re slippery little bast— kids.”

Carol’s lips quipped into an amused smile, and Valkyrie moved the kid from her bed to the floor. He nearly fell but regained his balance and toddled past Carol to return to the other children. Valkyrie watched him go before standing and stretching.

“Any disasters? Fights? Fires?” she asked.

“Nothing so dramatic,” Carol said. “One of them did sneak into the cockpit when I wasn’t looking, and she was reaching for some buttons that might have turned off gravity or sent us hurtling to a different dimension or something, but I stopped her in time.”

“Another victory for the heroes,” Valkyrie said drily.

She glanced around the room, but she saw only cots and supplies, so the children must have gathered in the main area. Loki was suspiciously absent as well, and she probably should have been more nervous about that, but she frankly didn’t have the energy. If he was causing trouble, she’d deal with it in time.

“You know, we’ve got the kids if you want to take some more time to yourself,” Carol said.

Valkyrie hadn’t spoken with her much in between the rescue and the temporary coma, but she was starting to like her already. Even if she did wear strange Midgard clothes — though they were admittedly better than the red, white, and blue suit she was wearing during the rescue.

Still, she was starting to feel itchy in the way she knew wouldn’t leave her alone until she had counted all the kids.

“That’s nice and all, but I’m really not interested in alone time if alcohol isn’t involved,” Valkyrie said.

She moved past Carol to join the rest of the children, and Carol followed her, laughing. Valkyrie almost added some other pithy quip, but her attention immediately went to the twenty-one children. She had once thought her training was buried too deeply in years and booze to be of any use to her now, but in moments like this, she felt the old hyper-alertness creep back on her.

The seven oldest children — ages 14 to 17 — were flipping through books that looked like they were from Midgard. There was another rescuer from Midgard, wasn’t there? The tall one who hadn’t brought a gun. Perhaps the books had come from him.

The two babies were sleeping in the arms of the oldest children, and the three toddlers moved among the older children but sometimes waddled to where five others — ages 8 to 13 — played a game of cards that Valkyrie didn’t recognize. Maybe another gift from the Midgardian man.

That left only three: Hans, Lilith, and Kari. At first panic threatened to boil up from Valkyrie’s stomach, but she spotted Lilith looking out a window to watch stars and meteors pass, and Hans was napping beneath a coat.

Kari looked asleep at first as well, but she was sitting cross-legged, and Valkyrie suspected she was meditating. The young girl had done so enough in the cave that none of the other children paid her any mind now.

“See? No casualties,” Carol said.

Valkyrie didn’t realize how tense she was until she relaxed. “Guess so,” she said. “Where’s Loki? I like to keep him where I can see him.”

“Not sure, but I haven’t seen Steve in a while either. I’m sure they’re together,” Carol said.

Before Valkyrie could make some comment about hoping they were both still alive, the kids noticed her, and half of them stood, and the other half moved to hug her. A cacophony of voices asked how she was doing, how long the trip would be, where was King Thor and Loki, and a hundred other questions that Valkyrie barely heard.

“Okay,” Valkyrie said, not quite shouting but loud enough that all the children quieted. “Let’s take these one at a time. I just woke up, I have no idea how long we’ll be in this spaceship, Thor is on Midgard, and Loki is around here somewhere. Now is anyone injured, hungry, or thirsty?”

Another chorus of voices answered this question, and Carol ended up passing out more food and water to the children. Luckily, no one was injured, so Valkyrie considered this day a success overall.

Then some of the older children asked her questions about Midgard based on their reading, and the babies and toddlers wanted time in her lap because they had practically imprinted on her, and she didn’t quite have the heart to deny them. Carol thought that was funny, but she at least helped answer some of the questions about Midgard.

Apparently Valkyrie had slept longer than she’d thought because the kids were getting sleepy again barely an hour later. The younger ones faded first, but before long they were all curling into the cots and bedrolls, and the few who stayed awake simple read or played a quiet card game.

She took a deep breath and nearly startled when Carol put a hand on her shoulder. “Come here,” she said. “I want to show you something.”

Carol nodded her head, and Valkyrie followed her to the cockpit. Carol sat in the pilot’s seat, and Valkyrie took the copilot’s.

“I never drink and pilot,” Carol said. “But I also don’t trust Loki not to sniff out my stash, and this is the best hiding place I have.”

She reached below the controls and pushed a button that revealed a hidden compartment, and she pulled out a beautiful, beautiful glass bottle. Valkyrie felt her eyes widen, but she couldn’t stop herself.

“I think we both deserve a little,” Carol said, and she pulled out two glasses. She poured a little into both and handed the fuller one to Valkyrie.

The first sip was heaven, and the burn was more satisfying than she remembered. Valkyrie fought not to down the entire glass in one gulp.

“I don’t suppose you have another glass,” Loki said.

“Just the two,” Carol said, but she handed the bottle to Loki, who took a deep drink.

Steve joined them in the cockpit, but he practically pressed himself against the wall in order to fit all four of them into the limited space. Valkyrie thought she might have minded in another life, but the children were safe and asleep, she felt fully rested for the first time in months, and they were on their way to Midgard. She was actually feeling… okay.

“I see you’re conscious again,” Loki said.

“I see you’re alive,” Valkyrie returned. “Don’t think I didn’t notice the injury.”

“Injury?” Carol said.

Loki pressed his lips together. “Not a concern,” he said.

“He stitched himself together in the engine room,” Steve supplied, and Loki turned to glare at him.

“I better not find blood in my engine room,” Carol said.

“I assure you I was clean,” Loki said.

Valkyrie snorted, and she took the bottle from Loki to take a swig of her own. She considered draining the rest of the bottle, but then she passed it on to Carol, who also abandoned her glass to drink straight from the source. Carol offered the bottle to Steve, but he shook his head.

“One of us should stay sober just in case,” he said.

“Probably a good call,” Carol said, and she took another drink.

They passed the bottle among them for a few more rounds while Steve joked and smiled good-naturedly with them. Valkyrie had met two of these people less than 24 hours ago, but she felt better than any moment she had spent on Sakaar.

She hadn’t exactly been thrilled to see Loki and two Midgardians arrive as their rescue, but maybe this wasn’t so bad.


	4. Does Triple-A Cover This?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Space pirates!

Carol was alone in the pilot’s seat for the first time in days. Usually a kid or two joined her when she was flying, and sometimes Valkyrie hung out in here to catch a break. Even Steve liked to sit in the copilot’s seat when the children were sleeping — though never for long because he was afraid of what Valkyrie and Loki would do if they were alone.

Now though, Carol’s fingers played across the controls, and she flew past stars, and she felt like the whole world was in front of her.

Not that she didn’t love the company, but she did sometimes miss that unique feeling of just-her-and-her-ship-against-the-world. She fell in love with that feeling in the Force, and she was still head over heels.

Plus, she missed the ability to accomplish any task in a remotely efficient way.

They had stopped for fuel and supplies at another trade planet, and against their better judgment, Steve and Carol had decided to stay behind with the children while Valkyrie and Loki bought what they needed.

_“We can teach them some things about Earth, so they won’t feel so uncertain about their new home,” Steve suggested._

_“If Valkyrie or Loki kills the other, you’re taking over their babysitting time,” Carol said. “And for the record, Valkyrie’s my bet for coming out of that fight.”_

No one died, but Carol’s ship had been ordered to never return to the planet on pain of death, and neither Valkyrie nor Loki would say why. Steve had given up on asking, but Carol was determined to get Valkyrie drunk and pester her for answers at some point.

A beep interrupted Carol’s musings, and her eyes went to the red light on the dashboard. The radar was picking up another ship, but when Carol tried to bring up a visual, she saw only stars, distant planets, moons, and meteors. Sometimes her radar short-circuited, but Carol’s gut told her this was more than a simple malfunction, and she wasn’t about to risk anything with twenty-one children onboard.

She activated the ship’s shield and started charging the laser weapons, and then she adjusted the settings of the radar. She still couldn’t manage a visual of the ship, but the radar picked up on the radiation of weapons and the energies of other lifeforms. There was definitely a ship, but the pilot and crew must have some advanced cloaking tech.

“Hi, not to interrupt a good time or anything, but I’ve been on a ship or two, and I’m pretty sure you just shielded the ship, and I’d like a little bit of a warning if we’re going into battle.”

Carol turned, and she was actually happy to see Valkyrie. She was so used to handling things on her own that she nearly forgot she had other warriors on her side these days. And warriors almost as good as her, too.

“My radar picked up a ship, but they’ve cloaked themselves. I figured that probably wasn’t a good sign,” Carol said.

Valkyrie took the copilot’s seat, and she adjusted the settings of the radar, except when she did it, she broke into the code of the program. With a few more taps of her fingers, the holographic image of the foreign ship displayed between them. It was small and fast, but Carol could tell the crew had advanced weapons and who-knew-what-else.

“Pirates,” Valkyrie said.

Carol nodded. “They’ll be here in about fifteen minutes.”

“I’ll get the other two.”

…

Steve hated himself for thinking that nothing could surprise him anymore. He should have learned a long time ago that the world was always going to be a little bit weirder than he thought.

“Did you say space pirates?” he said.

Carol and Valkyrie were sitting in the pilot and copilot seats respectively, and he and Loki squeezed inside the cockpit. He could tell when she came to get them that Valkyrie didn’t want to worry the children, but he had never expected space pirates to be the reason for the tension around her mouth.

“They look for ships with small crews, and they board and ransack them. Most pirate ships are tricked-up with all kinds of illegal shit like those cloaking shields,” Valkyrie said.

“Don’t worry, if they board, the four of us can definitely take them,” Carol said.

“We cannot allow them to reach that point,” Loki said. “If they see we have children on board, they’ll exploit that weakness.”

“So what are you suggesting?” Steve said.

Loki and Valkyrie exchanged glances in a way that Steve still struggled to coalesce with his worldview. They walked the line between bitter enemies and formidable partners, and Steve wasn’t sure which version scared him more.

“We meet them in the field,” Valkyrie said.

“And by that, she means she and I will meet them in the field,” Carol clarified.

That did not go over as well as the two women had likely planned. Valkyrie clearly didn’t care what they thought about the arrangement, but Carol offered at least a halfway sympathetic expression that did not sway Loki’s feelings at all.

“That’s ludicrous,” he spat. “The human can stay in the ship, but I’m not going to let some halfwitted pirate come anywhere near us.”

Steve almost missed the days when he was the strongest and fastest. On one hand, he was happy to know that his team members could handle themselves, but he also really hated that he was now the weak one relegated to staying on the ship to protect the children.

At least he was taking his newfound status better than the god of mischief.

“I need to be out there,” Loki continued, his eyes blazing. “I will not stay behind while the two of you take on the enemy.”

“Are you jealous?” Valkyrie teased.

Before Loki could launch himself at her, Carol interrupted, “You know, fighting space pirates was basically my day job before all this avenger stuff. That and finding homes for refugees. And rescuing anyone I came across along the way.”

“Yes, you were a regular hero, but I am one of the most powerful mages in the nine realms,” Loki said.

“Have you met some of the other avengers?” Valkyrie said. “You’re not that impressive anymore.”

“And I believe your last employment before the avengers was slave trader, so I hardly see how you qualify for the vanguard,” Loki hissed.

Valkyrie’s unfazed expression did not twitch, but Steve noticed her shoulders tense. Carol looked at Valkyrie with shock, and perhaps Steve would have reacted similarly, but he already knew of Valkyrie’s background. He knew of Loki’s, too, and he wasn’t surprised when Valkyrie fought back in equal measure.

“Do you really want to discuss what your last employment was? Or perhaps your employer?” she snarled.

Loki tried to hide his reaction, but Steve doubted anyone was fooled. If they let this continue much longer, either the pirates would board their ship while they were still bickering, or Valkyrie or Loki would go at each other’s throats with murderous intent.

“Loki, if the pirates get past Carol and Valkyrie, I’m not going to be able to protect the kids by myself,” Steve said. “We need a magic user here.”

Carol looked offended that Steve would imply the pirates could get past her, but he shot her a warning look before she could say anything.

Loki glared at Steve as if he suspected what he was doing, but the radar started beeping as the pirate ship entered their territory. Loki was not normally one to back down from a fight, but no matter what he pretended, he cared about the children.

“Loki and I will protect them,” Steve said. “But if you two get into trouble, contact us through the comms.”

“I think we can handle it,” Carol said, and she actually looked excited at the chance to fight space pirates.

Carol changed into her modified Kree suit, and Valkyrie forewent her armor for similar gear. They didn’t bother sharing their plan of attack with them before they went down to the bay. A moment later, the ship shook with their departure.

Which left Steve with Loki and the kids.

“Where’s Valkyrie?” one of the older children asked.

Steve and Loki exchanged glances, and Loki replied, “There’s a suspicious ship coming toward us, so Valkyrie has gone out to meet them. They won’t come anywhere near us.”

“Carol, too?”

“Yes, Carol’s with her,” Steve confirmed. “The two of them have each other’s backs, and they’ll protect us.”

Carol and Valkyrie were some of the most powerful people Steve knew — and he knew some powerful people — but the children still looked nervous. A few glanced at the spaceship’s windows even though they could only see stars and space from this angle. Others fidgeted in a way that only spelled trouble.

“Perhaps we should play a game,” Steve suggested. “Valkyrie and Carol will be back before you know it.”

…

Valkyrie liked the kids and all, but damn if she didn’t miss a good fight. She and Carol flew toward the enemy ship, and it was all she could do not to try a few flips and spins along the way. Judging by the smile on Carol’s face, she was feeling the same way.

Even when the ship fired the first shots — energy bolts that were definitely not legal on any planet — she and Carol dodged them easily, and the smell of ozone and metal felt like home. Valkyrie readied her own blaster and aimed for the closest engine to her, and the shield around the ship rippled.

“Will your photon blasts break through that?” Valkyrie asked over the comm line just for her and Carol.

“Let’s find out,” she said.

Carol aimed her blast at the same engine, and the red-orange torrent didn’t quite reach the ship, but the shield sparked, rippled, faded, and then shifted back into place.

“I’m totally going to break their fancy shield,” Carol said over the comms.

Just as she was about to fire again, the spaceship shot back with missiles, but instead of aiming for the two of them, the weapons hurtled toward Carol’s ship — and Steve, Loki, and twenty-one Asgardian children.

Valkyrie hissed a string of swear words, and she shot toward the missiles.

“Hold on, I’m coming,” Carol said.

“No, you’re our best bet at bringing their shield down,” Valkyrie said. “You focus on that.”

Valkyrie shot at one of the missiles with her blaster, and the nose of the missile tipped downward. One down, four to go. She kind of missed Sakaar when she fought all her battles while blinding drunk, and she typically she did not remember them the next day. Tomorrow, she’d remember every second of this — if she lived that long anyway.

She shot at a second missile, but the pirates must have some sort of remote control technology because this missile ducked away from blaster. Angry and frustrated, Valkyrie went straight for the missile, grabbed the metal with her hands, and threw the missile into another missile. She flew out of range just before both exploded. Three down.

Of the remaining two, one missile continued to hurtle toward Carol’s ship, but the other had changed course and headed straight toward Valkyrie.

“Shit shit shit shit—”

“Are you okay?” Carol said over the comms. “You know I can hear you.”

“Just take down the shield.”

Valkyrie ducked out of the way of the missile, but it quickly adapted and stuck to her trail. She flew, zigging and zagging, and she tried to fire her blaster at the same time, but this missile had learned from its comrades’ mistakes.

“All right, fine,” she muttered, and she flew straight for the other missile.

With one explosive before her and one behind her, she idly wondered if there was anyway she’d get out of this situation unscathed, and then both missiles collided, and the impact tossed her into space.

Five down.

Valkyrie was no stranger to pain, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t pissed off when fire bloomed across her chest. Damn space pirates and their stupid advanced weapons. She was never going to hear the end of this from the others.

On cue, she heard Carol’s voice over the comms: “Valkyrie? _Valkyrie?_ Are you okay? I can’t see you.”

“Is the shield down?” Valkyrie rasped.

There was a hesitation, and Valkyrie imagined Carol was debating on whether to push about her health and safety or continue with the mission. In the end, Carol had been a soldier, and she said, “Yeah. The shield’s down.”

…

Steve was holding a baby, and he was not doing a great job at it. He bounced her up and down and hummed a song that his mother used to sing to him, but the baby continued to whimper, her little face scrunched up in distress.

The other children wore similar expressions. Loki, too.

“All right,” Steve decided. “Everyone sit down.”

He sat cross-legged, and the children hesitantly imitated his position and stared up at him with large, watchful eyes. Loki stood against the wall, but Steve hadn’t truly expected him to obey anyway.

“We should go help,” Kari said. A few of the older children voiced their agreement.

Steve shook his head. “Carol and Valkyrie can handle it, and we’d just be in their way if we tried to help now,” he said, and he was reminding himself as much as the children. “Right now, we just need to pass the time. How about I tell a story?”

None of the children looked exactly thrilled, but storytelling was a frequent pastime on Asgard, and they latched onto the familiarity at least. Steve continued to bounce the baby in his arms as he frantically tried to think of a good story.

Did Asgardian children know any of the popular fairytales on Earth? Would those fairytales even make sense? Half the time, they didn’t make sense to Steve, so maybe he should pick something they’d at least recognize — like something to do with Thor! They knew and respected Thor, and maybe he could excite the children about Earth if he recited one of Thor’s adventures from his time as an avenger.

“So once upon a time, Thor and his, uh, fellow warriors were, um, feasting after a successful battle when this evil robot—”

“No.”

Steve turned to Loki. “Excuse me?”

“No,” Loki repeated. “Terrible from choice of story matter to the tone of telling. I shall tell it.”

Steve was not sure how Loki knew of the story of Ultron — at least until he stopped with his theatrical prologue and launched into the actual tale. He told of two small children who had lost their parents, and desperate to do some good in the world, they agreed to join an organization that promised them they’d gain the power to help their people.

The two children slowly trained their abilities, but just when they were close to actually doing some good, mysterious warriors broke into their headquarters and shattered the organization like a hammer to glass.

Loki illustrated this with a fist into his palm, and the children gasped.

He continued to tell the story from Wanda and Pietro’s point of view, and Steve remembered that Wanda and Loki did spend quite a bit of time together. Wanda had wanted to talk to someone about her magic, and while Dr. Strange was powerful, he did not have the same background of magical studies.

It was strange to hear a story in which he was the bad guy for a good portion of the narrative, and Steve wondered if this was how Loki often felt. He had definitely committed terrible crimes, but perhaps he had seen them as justified as well.

Loki had reached the point of the story when Tony was creating Vision, and just when Loki reached the part when Thor burst into the room, bringing lightning with him, the ship shook, and the children all screamed.

Steve jumped to his feet, still with a baby in his arms, when Valkyrie and Carol joined them.

A chorus of little voices explained their names, and several of the children wrapped their arms around the two women. Carol smiled brightly, but Valkyrie’s smile looked a little strained, and Steve narrowed his eyes.

“Is everything okay?” he asked.

“I destroyed their engine, so they won’t be flying anywhere anytime soon,” Carol said.

“You didn’t kill them?” Loki said.

Carol and Steve both gave him a disapproving look, and he crossed his arms. Before Loki could escalate the situation into a fight, Steve said, “Valkyrie, I was actually asking about you. Are you hurt?”

Now Valkyrie was glaring at him, but as he looked closer, he noticed part of her suit was blackened in a way that did not bode well. Carol and Loki both noticed the burns as well.

“I knew it,” Carol exclaimed. “I knew you weren’t all right.”

“I’m fine,” Valkyrie hissed. “Just a little bit of backlash from the missiles exploding. It’s _fine_.”

“Missiles?” Steve repeated.

He was about to order Valkyrie to the med bay — whether or not she would have listened was up in the air — when Carol’s radar started beeping again.

“Should have killed them,” Loki said.

Carol narrowed her eyes. “That shouldn’t be possible,” she said.

She moved to the cockpit and sat in the pilot’s seat where she tapped at her radar. Without the shield, they could all clearly see the pirate ship flying straight toward them.

“Everybody hold onto something,” Carol shouted, and then she twisted the ship out of the way as the first shot fired.

Steve desperately held onto the baby as the ship jolted beneath his feet, and he saw Valkyrie and Loki going for the other younger children. The older kids showed the younger ones how to hold onto railings as they all braced for impact.

Valkyrie shoved another baby in Steve’s arms before taking up the copilot’s seat.

“I swear I destroyed their engine,” Carol said. “And the backup engine.”

“They’re pirates,” Valkyrie said. “Who knows what kind of shit they have onboard?”

The guns were already charged up, so Valkyrie fired back as Carol maneuvered their ship. She gave up on an air battle and started a strategic retreat, but the pirate ship was right behind them.

“There’s a planet not too far away. We might can hide out there,” Valkyrie said as she aimed another round from their ship’s guns.

Steve trusted Carol’s and Valkyrie’s skills as pilots and warriors, and he clung to the Asgardian babies because it was the only thing he could do to help. He clung to them when the pirates destroyed their engine, and he held them to his chest as their ship plummeted through the atmosphere of a foreign planet.

There was a flash of green, and then they crashed.


	5. Detour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A small detour from the space road trip!

Steve expected broken bones and the cloying taste of ash and dust in his mouth, but he slowly blinked open his eyes to find… no one hurt. At all. He looked down to the baby in his arms, and he counted all twenty-one children, and they were all shaken but alive — and illuminated in a faint shade of green.

His eyes found Loki, kneeling on the ground, strain clear in the wrinkled lines of his forehead. He made eye contact with Steve, and once he realized the ship was no longer moving, the wisps of green magic dissipated, and Loki relaxed.

“Where’s Valkyrie?” asked one of the older children. Her gaze swept between Steve and Loki, and for one fearful moment, Steve imagined a future in which these children only had the two of them to care for them.

“I’ll check,” Steve said, and he gave the baby to Loki who was too startled not to take her.

Steve had been in his fair share of crashes — _“A week next Saturday at the Stork Club”_ — and he kept expecting to step over debris or duck below exposed pipes, but the ship looked perfectly normal. Dreading the worst, he peered into the cockpit, but Valkyrie was finishing the last of Carol’s stash of alcohol, and Carol was running diagnostics on the ship.

“How are the children?” Valkyrie asked, completely unfazed by the entire bottle she just drained.

“Completely unharmed,” Steve said. “A little scared.”

“That bastard,” she said.

Steve narrowed his eyes. “The pirates?”

“No, Loki,” she said, but she wasn’t angry. Steve would almost call her amused. “He sure knows how to pick the most dramatic moment possible to be a hero, doesn’t he?”

“So he saved us?” Steve said.

On an intellectual level, Steve knew Loki had saved the Asgardians from Hela, and he had helped them in the fight against Thanos, but that was still far different from understanding that Loki was the reason they were all alive now.

“His shield protected the inside of the ship, but the pirates shot our engine all to hell, and my radar system is unsalvageable. This bird’s not flying until we make some major repairs,” Carol said.

Steve pressed his lips together, and he looked past Carol and Valkyrie to the brief glimpse of the world beyond the cockpit. He no longer saw the star-studded black of space but instead a stretch of orange sand and purple sky. In the distance, structures rose from the ground that might have been the tentative buildings of a city.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“The planet’s called Tortalli,” Carol said. “All I know is that it’s primarily an agricultural society, and they trade at a nearby planet. I just hope that means they’ll have the supplies we need.”

“And the pirates?”

Carol and Valkyrie exchanged glances, but Valkyrie was the one to answer: “Without the radar, we can’t know for sure, but I don’t imagine they’ll have followed us. Pirates want easy prey, and if they follow us here, that’s a bit too much like invading a sovereign nation.”

“So right now, our biggest problem is figuring out how friendly this planet is,” Carol concluded.

…

Valkyrie tried to go with Carol to meet the locals, but they all insisted she was too injured to travel into the city. She tried to assure them that the alcohol had numbed the pain, so there was no problem _really_ , but they remained unconvinced.

Then Loki tried to tag along to scope out the planet, but Carol said she wanted to make a good impression on these people, so she took Steve instead. The two of them started the long walk to the closest city, and Valkyrie stayed in the copilot’s seat and mourned the fact that Carol hadn’t packed more booze.

About half an hour after Carol and Steve left, Loki slithered his way into the cockpit and made himself comfortable in the pilot’s seat.

“Carol’s going to gut you,” Valkyrie warned, but she didn’t have the energy to put any real heat into the threat.

Loki cut his eyes over to her, and she distinctly did not like the way his gaze lingered on the burned remains of her suit. Unfortunately, the alcohol’s numbing effects had not lasted as long as she’d hoped, and she was struggling to find a way to breathe that did not light fire up and down her torso.

“You’re worse off than they thought,” he observed. “You must hate that.”

“Not as much as I hate you,” she shot back.

Loki hummed to himself as if they amiably chatted over tea and afternoon sandwiches. “Hm, not your best. You must be in a great deal of pain.”

“I can still kick your ass, so I’d watch your next words,” she warned.

Her breaths came shallowly now. Any deeper, and her ribcage creaked and groaned. She had no doubt that the smarmy bastard noticed, but he remained elegantly poised in the pilot’s chair.

“Shouldn’t you be with the kids anyway?” she bit out.

“I fed them, gave them water,” Loki said. “They’re a bit tired out from all the excitement, so the younger ones are sleeping, and the older ones are wise enough to be wary in my presence. Best to let them recover in peace.”

Valkyrie barked out a harsh laugh. “After your little rescue, even the older ones will start to look at you with awe and hero-worship. You’ll be as loved as Thor if you keep it up.”

Loki narrowed his eyes, and if she hadn’t been injured, she thought he might have launched himself at her, knives flashing. Instead, he glowered at the ship’s controls as if he could tweak a few knobs and send himself anywhere but in this moment.

“Insult me all you like, but you were the one to dote on them all those long, horrid nights,” Loki said. “So many of them are orphaned that you’re now the mother figure to Asgard’s next generation.”

A shiver of horror went down Valkyrie’s spine even as warmth curled in her stomach. Then again, that might have just been the pain of her wound.

“Perhaps I ought to take a look,” Loki said, tossing out the words like dust in the wind. “I’d hate for the children of Asgard to lose another mother.”

_So there’s your play, you bastard_ , Valkyrie thought. If the pirates came down now to torture them, he would never admit to caring about any one of them. He’d take their anger and distrust over even a hint of toleration, let alone affection, but he also didn’t want them to die.

Part of Valkyrie wanted to let her wound rot and fester just to spite him, but damn it, she’d grown soft during her time with the kids. She’d rather take the bastard’s help than die and give those children another person to mourn.

“I still don’t like you,” she said.

“Good because I dislike you immensely,” he returned.

Valkyrie took off the outer layer of her armor, and she lifted the undershirt to reveal the molten mass of flesh, muscle, and bone that was her stomach at the moment. The burns stretched across her back, but the worst of it was where some shrapnel struck her during the missile’s explosion.

“I should have studied the healing arts more intently,” Loki murmured.

“You know, I was a little wary about letting you poke around my gaping wound, but now I feel better,” Valkyrie said.

The bastard laughed.

“You are lucky you’re Asgardian,” Loki determined. “You’ll heal soon once we remove the remaining shrapnel.”

“Remove what?”

“Haven’t you noticed? There’s a bit of the missile still there. You’re not going to like me very much in a moment.”

“I already hate you, so what’s a little more?”

Loki moved across the cockpit until he stood far too close to her — they hadn’t been this close since she straddled him to knock him unconscious — and then he materialized a knife. Before she could think to protest or even react, he plunged the blade into her wound, and she screamed and lashed out.

He danced just out of her reach with a sliver of metal in his hand.

“You’re about to pass out, but you’ll feel much better when you wake up,” he said.

“Fucking bastard,” Valkyrie wheezed, and then just to piss her off that much more, she indeed passed out.

…

Loki liked Valkyrie a lot more when she was unconscious. As much as he enjoyed volleying insults and quips with her, he much preferred cleaning her wound and wrapping her with bandages without her pointed questions. She liked to batter him with words like _noble_ and _heroic_ when she better than anyone knew that he didn’t deserve such titles, and if she did something as stupid as asking why he bothered to wrap her wounds, he might have had to injure her worse.

Once he was finished, he left her to sleep in the cockpit, and he checked on the children. The babies and toddlers still slept, and the older children played a quiet game of cards. They didn’t talk except to remind each other of whose turn it was, but Loki supposed they were still a bit shocked by the whole ordeal.

He moved to the lower level of the ship to survey their supplies when he heard tiny footsteps behind him. Without turning around, he said, “You should return to the others.”

“Are you tired? I felt your magic, and you were using a lot of power,” Kari said.

Loki spared a look for the small child before continuing his path to the storage rooms. While they were stranded on this planet, they might as well resupply, especially if they were going to be stuck here for a while.

“Stop ignoring me,” Kari said. “You hardly ever talk to me anymore.”

“You shouldn’t associate with me at all,” Loki said. “You should spend time with the children, or if you must seek out an adult, there are plenty of heroic types to capture your attention. Might I recommend the captain? He’s rather known for his upright morality and wholesome ideals.”

“I want to talk to you,” she said. “You promised you’d teach me more about my magic.”

“I’ve taught you how to control it. There is no more you need to know,” he said.

“There’s a lot more I need to know,” Kari exclaimed, and her tiny hands curled into fists. Around them, the boxes of protein bars and filtered water started to tremble. “I can’t shield an entire ship that’s crashing. I can’t do anything at all.”

Loki watched as everything in the room shook, and a box of fruit fell to the ground, and the oranges rolled.

“Kari,” Loki said calmly. “Deep breath. Find your place of safety.”

With panic in her eyes, Kari suddenly realized what she was doing, and she unclenched her fists and took two deep breaths. Then she closed her eyes, and Loki knew she was walking through the forest behind her home on Asgard — the place she had confided in Loki that was where she felt safest.

After a moment, the trembling ceased, and all was quiet.

“I’m sorry,” she said, barely a whisper.

“It’s okay,” Loki said. “Help me with these.”

The two of them picked up the fruit and returned it to the box. When they left, there was no sign anything at all had happened in the storage room. Kari returned to the card game with the other kids, and Loki decided to step outside.

He leaned against the ship and stared out at the open field of orange soil. Overhead, two suns shone across the purple sky, yet Loki didn’t feel particularly warm. The atmosphere must be exceptionally thick and protected to have such light without searing heat.

Due to the flat nature of the planet, Loki saw Carol and Steve coming long before they arrived. He watched them traipse across the sand, and when they finally arrived, he waved his hand in greeting.

“So?” he said. “Shall we receive help or prepare for war?”

“They’ll help,” Carol said. “They have the parts we need, but they have no use for units. Instead, we’ll trade some physical labor in exchange for the ship parts.”

“How barbaric,” Loki said.

“Plowing a few new fields, planting some seeds,” Carol said. “Between battles and rescuing refugees, I often made money by doing this kind of work on some of the more isolated planets.”

“How are the kids? And Valkyrie?” Steve asked, but he didn’t sound quite as noble-and-heroic as normal. In fact, he specifically looked at Loki with the kind of suspicion he had used at the beginning.

Loki didn’t realize how comfortable Steve was becoming around him until he was now faced with the leader who would just as soon contain him in a high-security prison. Half the time, he wanted to remind these people of what he was capable of, but now that distrustful expression tied his stomach into knots.

“Why, do you suspect I slaughtered them all while you turned your back?” Loki spat. “That would be in character, would it not?”

Steve pressed his lips together and squared his shoulders, but Carol stared at him as if he were crazy — but not mad-murderous-crazy, just being-ridiculous-crazy.

“No?” she said. “I just imagine the kids were scared after the whole pirate ordeal, and I’m fairly certain Valkyrie was more injured than she was letting on?”

Suddenly, all the fight bled out of Loki, and he nodded his head toward the ship. “Valkyrie’s tended her wound, and she’s resting. The children are playing among themselves.”

Carol nodded. “The people of the village have invited us to stay in their homes until our ship is retired, so once Valkyrie’s up to traveling, we’ll move there. I’ll go bring everyone up to speed,” she said.

“I’d actually like to speak to Loki for a moment,” Steve said. “We’ll join you soon.”

_Ah, here it comes_ , Loki thought.

Carol spared them a strange look, but she nodded and climbed into the ship. Loki watched Steve carefully, and he felt himself tensing for battle even though Steve only wore his shield. He had left Valkyrie’s gun behind for fear of giving the wrong impression to the villagers.

“Have you cast a spell on me?” Steve asked.

Of all the things Loki expected, that was not one, but then again, perhaps he should have expected it. Even Asgardians who grew up around such things tended to avoid sorcerers for fear of their wily tricks, and even when Loki was but a child, he was often accused of casting spells to get what he wanted.

“What makes you ask this now? Have you long harbored these fears, Captain?” Loki said.

“Until now, I’ve always been able to understand the people on whatever planet we visited, but I’ve always been with us. I just visited an alien village with Carol, and I couldn’t understand a word anyone said.”

Loki realized he was fidgeting his hands, and he forced himself to stop.

“Carol said she has a universal translator in her suit,” Steve continued. “She also said that you and Valkyrie use the Asgardian All-Speak or whatever. Why can I only understand other languages when I’m around you?”

Somehow, of all the morally dubious and frankly evil things Loki had done in the past, he did not expect to feel guilty about this of all things. Not corrosive guilt by any means, but a bit of a twinge. He blamed the clear disappointment in Steve’s eyes.

“I did not want to deal with the consequences of you accidentally insulting a brigand because you did not understand the language,” Loki said stiffly. “I cast a small working that would allow you to understand the other languages. As you have clearly figured out for yourself, the spell is not permanent, and I recast it every time we encounter another culture.”

“And you forgot this time?” Steve said.

“Other things were happening at the time.”

Loki waited for the condemnation. Perhaps Steve would be angry enough to oust Loki from the quest altogether. After all, he surely could not trust a wicked sorcerer who would cast spells on his unsuspecting teammates.

Instead, Steve sighed and uncrossed his arms. “Look, I get that you were trying to help me out, and if you would have just asked, I would have been fine with it. I hated making Carol do all the work today because I couldn’t understand the negotiations. I just wish you would have told me and asked permission.”

Loki’s lips parted, and he didn’t know how to respond. Steve was not one to lure his enemy into a false sense of security, and he seemed genuine.

“I see,” Loki said.

“Just don’t cast any spell on me without my permission first, okay?” Steve said.

Loki nodded.

“All right, I just wanted to make that clear. I did want to thank you for saving us. I hate to think what would have happened if you hadn’t shielded the ship when we crashed.”

“I’m sure you heroes would have thought of something,” Loki said.

Steve laughed, and then he went inside the ship. Loki stayed outside for a moment longer, but when his reflections on the conversation made him feel no better about the whole thing, he joined the others as well.

…

Carol actually kind of missed farm work. She generally loved the more adventurous side of being a knight errant in space. She helped Skrull refugees find homes; she saved societies under dictatorships; she fought off evil villains.

Between those things though, she needed food and shelter, and sometimes helping a poor family with the harvest was just as important as slaying some terrible beast.

“Turn the soil. There you go,” she instructed one of the children.

Three of the oldest were with her in the fields today. They turned the soil, made rows, and added fertilizer in the early mornings before the suns rose too high. The planet was fairly temperate, but no one liked to do physical labor during the heat of the day.

“What will go here?” one of the kids asked.

“I think a grain,” Carol said. “Something fairly easy to grow, and from what I gathered, a staple in their cooking. This is the fourth field of this crop, so I imagine that’s why they needed a bit of help.”

They asked a few more questions which turned into Carol telling a few stories. They liked to hear of her adventures, and she found that she liked sharing them. She tended to gloss over the more gruesome or morally dubious parts, but that was almost more for her own sake than for the children’s.

Once they readied the field for planting tomorrow, they trekked to the schoolhouse. Education was apparently important here as well, for the school was one of the biggest buildings in the village and one of the few places where all the children could gather at the same time. At night, they divided the children into groups of three and four to sleep in different family homes while Carol, Valkyrie, Steve, and Loki slept on the ship.

The first couple of nights, Carol patrolled the city to make sure the children were safe, but after a week of the village offering nothing but kindness, food, and warm beds, she felt more than comfortable leaving the children to their temporary foster families at night.

During the day, however, the children either helped Carol with the fields or studied in a spare room in the schoolhouse. Steve was the one to suggest the children needed to get back into the habit of learning after losing so much time, and Loki was the only one familiar with what Asgardian children studied these days. That left him with the dubious position as the children’s temporary tutor.

Carol knocked on the door twice before letting herself and the three teenagers inside. The other eighteen children sat in the desks — babies and toddlers in the laps of the others — while Loki stood at the front of the room.

He nodded in acknowledgment of Carol’s entrance, and she waved her hand in a gesture for Loki to continue. He waited for the three teenagers to take their seats, and after a moment, he continued.

“A century ago, when I reached this part of the story, I would tell you that the dark elves were decimated and never heard from again, but in light of recent events, I feel I should revise the state narrative to say _most_ of the dark elves were killed, but their remnants returned.”

Carol had originally planned to take a quick midday meal and then join Steve and Valkyrie in repairing the ship, but she found herself leaning against the door and listening to Loki’s history lesson. He had a rather captivating voice, and he squeezed in dry quips between stories that made Asgardian’s history far more interesting.

She was almost disappointed when Loki ended the class and dismissed the children to take lunch with the schoolchildren of Tortalli.

All twenty-one of them filtered out of the classroom, making idle chatter as they did, and when they all departed, Carol found herself still lingering.

“You’re pretty good at that, you know,” Carol said.

Loki looked up to meet her eyes, but he soon let his gaze return to the notes he gathered in his hands.

“Well, during my stint in prison, there was little to do but read and little to read but the grandiose histories of Asgard,” he said.

“You don’t have to keep bringing up the bad things you’ve done,” Carol said. “Trust me, we know, but you’ve done a few good things, too, and the good things are more recent.”

“How noble of you,” Loki said.

He started to move past her, but she followed him out of the classroom and then out of the schoolhouse. When they were far out of earshot, she said, “Have you ever thought about teaching magic, too?”

Loki nearly stumbled, but he brought himself under control quickly. “I hardly see the need to return to my evil ways so quickly,” he said.

“How is that evil? I’m just saying, I’m sure a few students could benefit from your instruction in more than just history,” Carol said, and she shrugged as if Loki’s actions either way did not matter.

“And literature,” Loki muttered. “I also teach them literature.”

“I’ve decided I’m going to visit Steve and Valkyrie and check on the progress of the repairs. If you felt like bringing lunch out to us, that’d be nice,” she said.

“Why would I do that?”

“Why would you, indeed,” Carol said.

…

“Are you sure you’re feeling up to this?”

“If you ask me that again, I’m going to shove this wrench up your ass.”

Steve decided to let Valkyrie continue doing whatever she was doing to the engine. He kept trying to talk her into taking it easy or at least slowing down, considering she had been wounded just a week earlier, but she refused to even acknowledge the fact that she was hurt. As far as she was concerned, she was in peak condition, and Steve was talking himself into an early grave by pestering her about it.

At least the ship was almost repaired. Steve did not know a ton about mechanics, but he had an eidetic memory from the serum, so once Valkyrie told him what to do, he could complete almost any task. By the end of the day, he was fairly sure he would have the radar system functioning.

He didn’t dare ask about how the engine was coming along. He liked Valkyrie, and he certainly admired her as a person and as a warrior, but he had a feeling he got on her nerves sometimes, and he didn’t want to aggravate that relationship any further. Maybe he’d bring her a bottle of the local village alcohol as a peace offering later.

“Hey, my baby’s never looked better,” Carol greeted, peering into the cockpit.

Steve looked up from where he’d been working behind the panel of the radar. “Hey, Carol,” he said, genuinely happy to see her. “How are things in the village?”

“The farm work’s done for the day, and Loki’s not a bad teacher. The kids seem to be learning,” she said. “More importantly, how’s my ship?”

“Better every day,” Steve said. “Loki’s really a good teacher?”

“Yeah, I listened in on one of his lectures, and he’s not a bad storyteller. I learned a thing or two,” she said.

“Apparently he’s pretty known for that,” Valkyrie said.

She wiped her greasy hands on a cloth and let herself into the cockpit. It was still a tight squeeze in the limited space, but somehow, they managed to fit every time.

“His lectures?” Steve asked.

“His storytelling,” Valkyrie said. “I didn’t get the best impression of him on Sakaar, so when we were all on the Statesman, I asked around about him among the Asgardians. Plenty had bad things to say about him, but of the good things, his storytelling came up the most.”

Before Carol or Steve could respond to that, Valkyrie continued, “I think we can leave in two days. Will you have done enough farm work to pay our dues by that time?”

“I’d say so,” Carol confirmed. “My ship will really be ready?”

“I should hope so. We’ve certainly been here long enough,” Loki said as he, too, joined them in the cockpit, but he came smelling of fresh bread and roasted meat.

“Shit, Lackey, did you bring lunch?” Valkyrie said.

Loki narrowed his eyes at the clearly hated nickname, but he shoved the food into Steve’s arms to distribute among them.

“Not my doing, I assure you,” he said. “Apparently, some of the villages felt sorry for our plight and offered a small tribute. Far too much food for me alone, or I assure you, you would have never known of it.”

Judging by the look Carol was giving him, this was not quite the truth, but Steve smiled and gave a bit of the meat and bread to everyone. It was a strange taste but warm and filling.

He was almost sorry to leave Tortalli in two days.


	6. Tourist Trap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final showdown—
> 
> These kids are probably learning so many swear words.

Tortalli was nice and all, but Valkyrie was not sorry as Carol put the finishing touches on her ship. The two of them sat in the cockpit — Carol working on her radar system and Valkyrie cleaning her laser gun. Just outside, Steve and Loki were playing some Midgard game with the children. Red rover or whatever, which sounded ridiculous to Valkyrie, but then again, everything about Midgard did.

She was intrigued to learn more.

Valkyrie had not had a home in a long time, and she didn’t expect much from Midgard, but no planet could be worse than Sakaar. Maybe a small part of her wished she could have seen Asgard one last time before thrice-damned Hela ruined it, but too many memories plagued her from the name alone.

Midgard was a fresh start, and she could use one of those. Besides, Thor wasn’t so bad. Maybe he wouldn’t completely screw up New Asgard.

“Uh oh,” Carol said.

If they ever made it to Midgard, that is.

“What’s wrong?” Valkyrie said.

Carol tapped at her screen a bit more, and she grimaced. “The good news is that the radar’s up and running, and my ship is ready to fly.”

“The bad news?” Valkyrie prompted.

“Well, according to my fully-functioning radar, the pirates are waiting for us just outside of the planet’s atmosphere.”

Valkyrie rattled off a string of swear words she learned on Sakaar.

…

While Steve was teaching the children some idiotic game that involved a lot of running and chanting, Loki watched. Steve had insisted that he join the festivities, but he had insisted more that if Steve dared make him run through a line of children, Loki would curse him with something far worse than a little translation spell.

Steve left him alone after that, but he did insist that Loki keep an eye on the two babies. So beneath the shadow of the ship, Loki sat on a small blanket with two sleeping babies in front of him. How far he had fallen, but he couldn’t bring himself to be too upset about it.

“Can I sit with you? I’m getting tired.”

Loki eyed Kari suspiciously, but he nodded toward the blanket, and the little girl made herself comfortable next to him. She glanced at the babies but apparently found them uninteresting. To be fair, they did not do much when they were asleep.

“Is there a spell to not feel tired anymore?” Kari asked.

“Yes, but when the spell wears off, you are twice as tired as you were before.”

Kari grimaced. “Not worth it.”

“Why are you so tired?” Loki asked.

He had kept an eye on Kari, Hans, and Anya after Steve had told him of their altercation, but Hans seemed to keep to himself, and Anya played with the other children her age. Kari veered between joining one group of the children or another and wandering off by herself.

“After everyone goes to sleep, I practice with my magic,” she said, and she met his eyes as if to dare him to refute her.

Loki sighed and fought the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Kari, you shouldn’t—”

“Shouldn’t what?” Kari challenged. “Practice magic? You told me yourself that there was nothing wrong with who I am. That magic is a tool to be studied. Not good or evil.”

“I did,” Loki admitted. “That is still true. However, truth or not, that does not change that your relationship with your peers may suffer if you continue down this path.”

His relationships certainly had. Thor had never understood why he’d studied the paltry dance of magic rather than the straightforward and honorable skill of the sword. Sif and the Warriors Three had taken similar opinions, and soon everyone in the palace had regarded Loki with suspicion.

Of course, then Loki had taken to truly using his magic for mischief, but they had been expecting that anyway, so why not live up to their expectations?

Still, that had been a rather lonely life — still was — and Loki hated to see another small child wander down the difficult road of solitude and strife. He knew deep down that Kari’s problems would not disappear if she just ignored her gifts, but he couldn’t help but want to save her some pain. She had already lost her parents and her home, and Loki knew something of how that felt.

“My friends don’t care,” Kari insisted. “Most of them know I have magic. So what if people like Hans don’t like it? I don’t care about him.”

He thought of Steve and Carol and how they had thanked him for saving the ship during the crash. They were from Midgard, and they appreciated what he offered — even his lectures and stories for the children.

Perhaps Midgard would be different. The planet was home to all sorts of people these days — even those with magic. He would have to introduce Kari to Wanda.

“Let’s start with something simple,” Loki said. “Have you tried teleporting yet?”

Kari’s smile was brighter than any star.

…

That night, after the children had gone to bed, Steve met with Carol, Valkyrie, and Loki in the cockpit. They had said their goodbyes and given their gratitude to the local villages during the day, and they had planned one last meeting for the night before they left for Earth.

Steve had thought they were just checking in, maybe taking a look at the inventory before the long journey, but the grim looks on Carol’s and Valkyrie’s faces said otherwise.

Loki glanced between them with suspicion. “What happened?” he said.

“The pirates are waiting for us,” Valkyrie said.

Loki swore in a language Steve did not understand, but he could guess at the general content.

“We should have killed them,” Loki hissed, and he was glaring at Valkyrie who glared back with equal ferocity.

“Why?” Steve said, partly to keep the two Asgardians from tearing each other apart. “I thought you said space pirates looked for easy prey.”

Carol shrugged. “Maybe they took offense when we shot through their cloaking shields. Maybe they think we have something valuable onboard since we went to so much effort to protect our ship. Either way, they’ll attack as soon as we leave the planet’s atmosphere.”

“We have a better idea of what we’re up against this time,” Valkyrie said. “We’re better rested, better armed. I think we can take a few pirates.”

“You thought that last time,” Loki said.

“Do you have any other suggestions?” Carol said, and she raised her eyebrows with her arms crossed.

She looked the least concerned out of all of them though Steve knew it was not from a lack of empathy. Carol loved the kids, and she had a savior complex a mile long as well, but after the life she had led, Steve doubted there was anything that could get her too worked up. She had barely treated Thanos as more than a mild annoyance.

“As a matter of fact,” Loki said, “I do.”

…

Carol did not love Loki’s plan.

She personally was a fan of suiting up, punching someone in the face, and taking down an entire spaceship. Unfortunately, the pirate ship was stationed right above the village, and if she took down the ship in fiery glory, the wreckage would land right on the people who had helped them.

But that didn’t make Loki’s plan any better.

“So let me get this straight,” Carol said. “You want to take an escape pod, cast an illusion to make the pod look like our spaceship, and let yourself get captured by the pirates?”

“Yes,” Loki said.

“While you’re distracting them, we’re going to take the real spaceship and fly out of Tortalli’s atmosphere but stay within your teleportation range?” When Loki nodded, Carol continued, “And then you will sabotage the pirate ship badly enough that they won’t be able to chase after us and then teleport onto our ship, so we can all go?”

“Correct,” Loki confirmed.

“I thought you wanted to kill them all,” Valkyrie said.

“Obviously, I will,” Loki said. “But we are not making mistakes this time. Just in case I am not successful in destroying all of the space pirates, you and the children will already be escaping.”

“What about you?” Steve said. “What if you get into trouble, and you can’t sabotage the ship or teleport out of there?”

“Not possible,” Loki dismissed. “Now shall we?”

Carol didn’t like it, but she also didn’t have a better plan. “I’ll show you to the escape pod,” she said.

…

So they set Loki’s stupid plan into motion.

Steve also did not like it, but he couldn’t think of a strong argument against it, so they informed the children of the basic outline of what was happening. The children had no problem voicing their concerns, but Loki shushed them with a glare, and no more was said on the matter.

Valkyrie took to preparing the children for the journey — strapping them into seats and pairing older children with younger children — and Carol started warming up the engines of her ship. Steve couldn’t find Loki at first, but he walked outside to see him slowly enchanting the escape pod to look more and more like Carol’s ship.

“I thought you’d be comforting the children about now,” Loki said. “Or priming them with stories of Midgard.”

“Is there a way you can call us for help if you get in a tight spot?” Steve said.

Loki stopped altering the spaceship — it already looked like an identical copy of Carol’s by now — and he stared at Steve with obvious suspicion.

“Why?” he said.

“What do you mean?” Steve said. “If you’re in trouble, we need to be able to help you.”

Loki narrowed his eyes. “I would think it’d be a relief to fly away without me.”

Steve fought the urge to roll his eyes. “Look, I know this partnership started out with a lot of tension, and you can’t really blame us for that. You didn’t give us many reasons to trust you at the beginning,” he said.

Before Loki could respond to that, make him angry, and derail this entire conversation, Steve barreled through, “However, things have changed. You helped us fight Thanos. You got yourself hurt saving the kids, and you saved us all when we crashed. You’re a part of the team now, and I look out for the people on my team.”

“How… noble of you,” Loki said, but his voice was quiet. Steve had never seen him so unsure before, and that was just a little bit sad in and of itself.

“It’s not noble,” Steve said, softer this time. “It’s just being teammates. Friends.”

“Friends,” Loki repeated as if trying out the word. He seemed to like it.

“Now,” Steve said, “are psychic links real? Because we need to figure out some way for you to send a distress signal.”

“I thought you said you did not wish me to cast a spell on you,” Loki said.

“Without my permission,” Steve reminded him. “Now I’m giving you my permission.”

…

As Loki settled himself inside the escape pod, he couldn’t help but think of doing almost this exact thing on Asgard. He had taken the ship into Odin’s treasure room to raise the demon who would destroy his home planet, and he likely would not have escaped without the Tesseract there to transport him away.

Now he flew out of the atmosphere of Tortalli, and the pirate ship almost immediately caught the escape pod in its clutches, but so much was different. His pod shook as mechanical arms held him in place and prepared for the pirates to board.

In Asgard, he had known that Valkyrie, Bruce, and even Thor did not particularly care one way or the other if he survived, and none of them had bothered to put an escape plan in place for him. Sure, he had been fine, but still.

But this time, Steve had closed his eyes with the utmost trust as Loki had cast the psychic link between them. Carol had squeezed his shoulder and wished him luck. Even Valkyrie had offered a nod and demanded that he not get himself killed — even if she insisted it was because his death would be a real downer on the trip to Midgard.

When the pirates boarded his escape pod and scowled to find themselves in a cramped piece of junk metal instead of the ship they’d pursued, Loki smiled.

_Don’t antagonize them. You need to be alive when they take you on their ship._

Loki still wasn’t used to Steve’s voice in his head, but he doubted Steve liked the vise versa any better. Thankfully, he had cast the psychic link, so they only received the thoughts with intention, and neither one of them would be hearing any fleeting notion to cross the other’s mind.

_What do you take me for? I do not plan to needlessly risk my health._

_Sure._

“What the hell is this?” the first pirate growled. He pointed a laser gun at him, and Loki raised his hands to show he was unarmed. “There were more of you. This isn’t the right ship.”

“I don’t mind waiting if you need a moment to work it out for yourself,” Loki said.

Perhaps he should have listened to Steve because the second pirate hit him over the head with the butt of his gun and shackled Loki’s hands behind him. Still disoriented from the blow, Loki allowed himself to be marched over to the pirate ship. He tried to pay attention to the rooms and passage ways as they passed, but his head didn’t feel right. More so than a hit to the head should have explained.

_What’s going on?_

_I’m inside the ship._

_You sound strange. Do you need help?_

_No._

The pirates took him to the deep underbelly of their ship and practically threw him against the iron bars of their prison cell. They didn’t bother to chain him up or even lock the cell door before the biggest one kicked him in the stomach.

“Where are the others? Where’s the real ship?” the pirate snarled.

“You have,” Loki tried and then coughed up a spatter of blood. He rasped, “You have already caught me.”

He tried to shield his face from the next blow, but the other pirate joined the first. “There’s nothing of value on the ship. Barely even worth the spare parts.”

The first pirate growled in frustration and kicked Loki in the stomach again. “Tell me where the other ship is, and I might grant you a quick death.”

“How generous,” Loki murmured, but his words came out slurred.

What was happening? He shouldn’t be this affected by a few kicks — he had faced far worse. He attempted to cast a spell that would tell him the damage to his insides, but instead, the shackles flared and burned his wrists.

Ah. There it was.

_They’ve hindered my magic. I cannot destroy the ship. Tell Carol to leave now._

_How did they take your magic? Wait, no, that’s not important. We’re not leaving without you._

_Go now. I cannot destroy the ship without my magic, and this is the only chance for the children to escape. Leave._

After all, the pirates were rather distracted with him right now.

…

“Loki’s in trouble,” Steve said as he burst into the cockpit where Carol and Valkyrie were preparing for takeoff. “We have to get him out of there.”

Valkyrie swore. “That idiot. How the hell are we supposed to save him without putting all of the children at risk?”

“He told us to leave, but there’s no way,” Steve said. “Not when he took the risk.”

Carol glanced up to the sky even though they couldn’t see the pirate ship from here. She pressed her lips together as she considered.

“I can go up there. Save him myself.”

“We need you to pilot this ship,” Valkyrie said. “I don’t have a lot of experience in open space.”

“Is there any way you can get me up there? Another escape pod?” Steve said.

Carol shook her head. “I only had the one escape pod. I don’t suppose there’s any Asgardian magic that can help us here,” she said with a look toward Valkyrie.

Valkyrie shook her head. “I didn’t study magic. Didn’t have the talent for it.”

“I do.”

The three adults turned to see Kari standing just outside the cockpit. Her dark curls were pulled back from her face, and there was a steely glint in her eyes.

“I can do it,” she said. “Loki’s been teaching me, and I can get you to the ship.”

Valkyrie, Steve, and Carol exchanged glances. It felt wrong to put such a huge responsibility on such a young girl, especially when none of them really understood magic or the consequences of it.

“Are you sure?” Steve asked. “I don’t want you to risk anything by helping us.”

“I can do it,” Kari repeated. “I know I have the magic to get you there, but I—” She hesitated, and for the first time, uncertainty crossed her face as she cast her gaze to the floor. “I’m not sure I can bring you back. I haven’t teleported anything that I can’t see.”

“That’s okay,” Steve promised her. “Loki can bring me back.”

Assuming he was able to rescue Loki and destroy the ship, but Steve was taking this new plan exactly one step at a time.

Kari nodded with renewed confidence, and she touched Steve’s arm. “Are you ready?” she whispered.

Valkyrie tossed her gun to Steve, and he checked to make sure his shield was strapped to his back. “I’m ready,” he whispered.

She squeezed his arm, and then Steve felt nothing at all.

One moment he was on Carol’s ship, and the next he was… somewhere else. He assumed he was on the pirate ship, but he didn’t see anything but metal-plated walls and a single port window that looked over the expanse of space.

He had a moment to worry that Kari had sent him somewhere else entirely when he heard a familiar cry of pain. Drawing both his shield and Valkyrie’s gun, he started toward the noise with quiet steps.

There were two pirates — one beating a bloody and bruised Loki into the ground and another standing idly watching. Steve didn’t wait for his thoughts to catch up to his body before he shot the pirate on the other side of the room and sent his shield flying toward the pirate closest to Loki. Once he was far enough away from Loki to not pose a risk, Steve shot him, too.

Steve wasn’t sure if he had killed them or not, but neither rose.

_I told you to leave._

“I didn’t listen,” Steve said out loud. “Teammates look out for each other.”

He put his shield and gun away, and he helped Loki to his feet. He swayed for a moment but eventually remained standing without any help.

“Can you use your magic now?” Steve said.

“The shackles,” Loki said, voice faint.

Steve finally realized what was making Loki’s stance so strange. He took out his shield and broke the chain connecting the two cuffs. With the magic apparently broken, Loki murmured something that made the rest of the metal evaporate into nothing.

“Now how do we bring down this ship?” Steve said.

“Hold on,” Loki said.

He grabbed Steve’s arm, and then they were gone again.

When Steve opened his eyes, he was standing in Carol’s ship once again. Valkyrie, Carol, and Kari stared at them with wide eyes, and Loki stumbled. He almost fell but righted himself just in time. He looked an inch away from death.

Steve knew he needed to start administering emergency medical care, but what came out of his mouth was, “What about the ship?”

“Don’t worry,” Loki said. “The moment you unleashed my magic, I made some rather unfortunate alterations to the engine. They will not be following us.”

“All right then, to Earth,” Carol said, and she climbed into the pilot’s seat. “Loki, get to a med bay,” she tossed over her shoulder.

With a few clicks to the control board, the ship rumbled and began to lift off to the ground. Valkyrie looked to the cockpit and then back to Loki as if she couldn’t decide where to offer her services, but she ended up wrapping an arm around Loki’s waist and taking half his body weight.

“Come on, you idiot,” she said and started marching him to the infirmary.

Steve started to follow, but he decided Valkyrie would be able to help more than him. Instead, he decided to go tell the children the good news.

…

Valkyrie wanted to body slam Loki into the infirmary bed, but she contented herself with roughly shoving him onto the cot.

“Ow,” Loki said.

“You really did it this time, huh, Lackey?” Valkyrie said.

She busied herself with gathering antiseptic, gauze, and Asgardian-strength painkillers. Loki adjusted himself on the cot and watched though she wasn’t sure how much he could see through his swollen eyes.

“As I recall, I was providing a service,” he said, voice gravelly.

“And we’re all so thankful.”

“I can tell.”

Valkyrie gave him the painkillers first, and then she helped him remove his shirt. The skin was mottled with dark bruises, but she started by cleaning away the blood. When Loki winced at the antiseptic, she only scrubbed harder.

“Are you angry?” Loki said. “Because I am getting that impression.”

“Have you ever worked on a team?” Valkyrie said.

“Approximately.”

For a long time, Valkyrie had known nothing but working on a team. They had trained together, fought together, lived together, played together. Back then, she couldn’t imagine doing anything alone, and it had been second nature to consider her comrades in arms in every decision.

The thing was, she understood where Loki was. On Sakaar, she had learned how to be alone, and she became comfortable with her company even if she didn’t necessarily like her own presence. There were some growing pains in learning how to be part of a team again.

“You’re one extreme or the other,” Valkyrie said as she started to wrap the worst of the wounds with gauze. “Either you’re out for yourself and no one else, or you’re sacrificing yourself at every opportunity.”

“I fail to see your point,” Loki said, pointedly looking away from where Valkyrie was fastening the gauze.

As soon as she finished, he pulled his clothes on to hide the bandages, and he acted as if he was going to rise and go about his business, but Valkyrie pushed him back on the cot.

“Balance,” she said. “You can be a part of a team without throwing yourself to the wolves at the first sign of trouble. You work together, and you ask for help when you need it, and when you’re teammate’s in trouble, you lend a hand. It’s not that complicated.”

“I see that the captain is rubbing off on you,” Loki said.

Valkyrie shrugged. “We’re all changing. No point in denying it.”

She left him in the infirmary and returned to the cockpit. Once she settled herself into the copilot’s seat, Carol cast her a questioning glance.

“All right?” she asked.

“I think so,” Valkyrie said. “You?”

Carol grinned. “We’re in the stars, and we’re on our way home. I can think of nothing better.”

Valkyrie watched the stars fly past them — or she supposed they were flying past the stars — and she felt a strange feeling wash over her. Something about finally knowing the children were safe. Even looking forward to a new home. Not the Asgard she once new, but something even better led by someone who truly cared about Asgard.

No great evil on the horizon. Teammates who were more than allies of convenience but possibly actually friends.

Hope, Valkyrie realized. That was the feeling.

Hope.


	7. Sometimes the Destination Is Pretty Great

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They go home.

When they landed in Wakanda, there was a welcoming party.

T’Challa, Shuri, and a group of Wakandan representatives greeted them with open smiles. T’Challa made a point of shaking Valkyrie’s hand and welcoming her to his country and the planet at large. Carol nodded respectfully to Okoye and high-fived Shuri.

Bucky stood near the Wakandans, and he waved when Steve stepped down from the spaceship. Steve immediately pulled him into a hug.

When they stepped back, Bucky smiled. “You’re alive,” he said. “How was space?”

“More like Earth than you would think,” Steve said. “I got you a souvenir.”

Steve gave him the laser gun Valkyrie had first offered him and a deck of the strange cards Loki had played on the trade planet. Bucky examined the gun and then flipped through the deck, his face lighting up at the strange symbols.

Natasha lingered at the edge of the crowd — possibly to evaluate the threat level of the new Asgardians, but her presence was still appreciated. Steve smiled at her, and she smiled back.

Then Loki stepped down from the ship with the first of the Asgardian children, and the bulk of the crowd — which seemed to be every surviving Asgardian — cheered. Thor was at the front, and Loki barely managed to take a step on solid Earth ground before Thor wrapped his arms around him.

Loki patted his back twice with one arm before wiggling out of the embrace to introduce — or re-introduce — the children to Thor, T’Challa, Shuri, Okoye, Bucky, Natasha, and the rest.

It was hard to follow exactly what happened next. There was a flurry of hugs and exclamations. More than a few tears were shed.

Eventually, T’Challa welcomed them all to the dining hall where everyone was encouraged to eat their fill of Wakandan delicacies. Some of the children reunited with their families, and they often turned in early — sequestering themselves away in the New Asgard village to spend the evening together.

The other children had no families to take them away, but in that case, the Asgardians opened their arms, and they made arrangements for children to stay with one family or another. Kari was to stay with Thor and Loki, officially out of respect to her father, Volstagg, who had been a dear friend of Thor, but Kari’s eyes shined with delight when she realized she would be living with Loki.

The celebration continued into the small hours of morning, but bit by bit, they drifted to their homes, full of food and happy and safe.

…

After Thor put Kari to bed in her own bedroom — he had protested when T’Challa recommended the king’s home include a few extra rooms, but now he was thankful for the suggestion — he walked down to the only bedroom other than his own that he had personalized. He knocked on the door, and with permission granted, he tentatively entered the room.

“Don’t hover in the doorway. Come sit down.”

Relieved, Thor moved to sit in one of the two armchairs by the fireplace. Loki was already sitting in the other, flipping through one of the books Thor had left here. He knew very little about Earth literature, but with Shuri’s help, he gathered a small collection that he hoped spanned a number of subjects.

“Are you well?” Thor asked. “Valkyrie told me you were hurt.”

“I’m fine. As you know, we heal quickly.”

Loki barely lifted his gaze from the book, and his modest clothing did not offer Thor any hints as to whether he told the truth, but he supposed he would have to trust Loki’s word.

“New Asgard seems to be coming along,” Loki continued, and though he had not asked a question, Thor heard one anyway.

He had hated staying behind while Loki, Valkyrie, Steve, and Carol rescued the children, but he was beginning to understand that being a king sometimes meant more bureaucracy and less adventuring.

T’Challa had graciously offered a small section of Wakanda for the construction of a few small houses and businesses. Legally, New Asgard was a city in Wakanda, but T’Challa allowed Thor to govern as he saw fit as long as he did not interfere with Wakandans. Also, as a favor to T’Challa, when Tony, Bruce, Clint, or Natasha came to visit, they were to stay with the Asgardians. Only Bucky and Steve had housing among the Wakandans.

“There is still much to do, but we are recovering,” Thor said.

“I have one more task for your list,” Loki said, and he finally closed the book to look Thor in the eyes. “The children need a place to learn — both their history and the present they find themselves in.”

“Of course,” Thor said.

They had already built a schoolhouse, and a few of the Asgardians had volunteered as teachers. Even a couple of Wakandans had mentioned teaching part-time to update the children on Earth science and history.

“I also think some of the children might benefit from studies in magic,” Loki continued, and his eyes flitted to the fireplace.

Thor smiled softly. “Of course.”

…

Steve was happy to be home. Sam took a break from his work in Washington D.C. to come visit, and the three of them went for a run every morning. Then they ate breakfast with T’Challa when he had the time, but if not, they joined Carol and Natasha. Apparently the two of them were working on some plan to give the Guardians a base of operations on Earth, but Steve didn’t ask too many questions. He knew Carol and Natasha were more than capable.

A lot of their days, they helped out the Asgardians as they built up their home. The children were going to school every day now, and they organized games in the evenings. Bucky taught them how to play baseball.

Loki was teaching Kari and one other child a bit about magic.

Loki did a lot more in general these days. Before, he tended to remain in the shadows, but now he helped the Asgardians as they constructed the village, and he even ate dinner with Thor and T’Challa on occasion. Steve always made a point of speaking to him whenever they crossed paths.

“He’s different,” Sam remarked as they watched Loki instruct Kari and the other student in how to coax a plant into growing faster.

“We all are,” Steve said.

“Yeah, but we all didn’t start out trying to take over New York,” Sam said.

Then Bucky beckoned them over, and they joined the baseball game. Steve found himself smiling with a level of carefree he didn’t think himself capable of anymore.

Not everything was peace and prosperity. Thanos had left scars, and not everyone reacted well to the knowledge of alien life — and the painfully humbling knowledge that a lot of that alien life could subjugate Earth with barely a thought.

Conflict broke out, and with the help of their new system created in the wake of the conferences, Steve and a few assorted avengers went out on calls to help keep the peace. He liked being able to help, but he couldn’t help but feel that he was a relic of a time passed.

Well, he knew that was true. He should have died some time in the 80s — actually, considering his health problems, probably the 50s — but here he was in the 2020s. It helped to rescue a few innocents and contain the occasional wayward soul, but if he was going to be granted this second life, shouldn’t he be doing something else with it?

“Tell me about it,” Valkyrie said.

Steve had not meant to spill his guts to Valkyrie — and he didn’t even have the excuse of drunkenness though they’d both been drinking pretty heavily — but he had stumbled across her sitting on the front steps of her home, and he’d joined her. Then she’d offered her bottle to him, and he’d taken a sip, and as they both stared out at the beauty of the Wakanda wilderness, the words started to flow.

“I was a valkyrie, the warriors of Asgard, and now I’m the only one left,” she said. “Now Asgard itself is a relic of the past. What’s a valkyrie supposed to do on Earth a millennia later?”

Steve didn’t have an answer, so they finished the bottle.

Though neither one of they had really solved any problems, Steve had enjoyed seeing Valkyrie again, so he started making a habit out of dropping by her hut. Sometimes Asgardians drifted by to stare at her in awe, which Valkyrie clearly hated, but she always smiled when the children visited. They loved her for what she had done for them, not for her imagined heroism of the past.

Occasionally, Loki joined them. He did not say much, but the banter between him and Valkyrie was more entertaining than hostile now. He liked to ask Steve for news, and sometimes he asked questions. Apparently, Thor had given him some books to learn about Earth, but as Steve himself was a little behind on the times, they often learned together.

Without his villainous persona, Loki was feeling a little out of place himself these days, but Steve was not going to call him on it.

It was a night when Steve, Valkyrie, and Loki were sharing bowls of soup at Valkyrie’s table when Carol came knocking on her door. She took one look at the three of them and smiled brightly, “Good, you’re all here.”

“Want some soup?” Valkyrie asked.

Carol spooned herself a bowl and joined them at the table.

“How do you guys feel about another rescue mission?” she said.

Steve, Loki, and Valkyrie exchanged glances. Loki asked, “What sort of rescue?”

“Natasha and I have been in contact with the Guardians, and their hands have been a bit full lately. Thanos did a lot of damage beyond Earth,” Carol said. “Great soup by the way.”

While the rest of them processed this information, Carol ate about half the bowl. Her mouth still full, she glanced up to gauge their expressions.

“So the Guardians need help?” Steve said.

“Here’s the thing,” Carol said, wiping her mouth. “Earth has Iron Man, Hawkeye, Ant-Man, Hulk, Black Widow, and Thor. Plus T’Challa, Wanda, Vision, Sam, and Bucky. Probably some others I’m forgetting. The point is that Earth is pretty well covered as far as protection goes, but according to the Guardians, there are a lot of others out there who need a hero or two.”

“I have nothing else planned,” Valkyrie said with a shrug. “Do we get a name?”

“Carol and the Loose Canons?”

“We’ll have to negotiate that,” Loki said. “I will have to return occasionally to continue my lessons with Kari, but I believe New Asgard can go on without me otherwise.”

Steve glanced among their faces — the hope and the determination — and he smiled. Carol was also a bit out of place. Not quite of Earth, not quite Kree. She was from another time, too, but she was making her own place in the world.

Perhaps this was how.

“I’m in,” he said.

Maybe they should call themselves the Relics.

…

So they said goodbye.

Loki and Valkyrie had to tell Thor, which was the hardest of all. He was heartbroken that they planned to leave again, but once they promised they’d come visit every few months, he was proud of their altruistic hero adventures. Loki and Valkyrie both took offense to that, but they couldn’t really deny it either.

Steve told Sam and Bucky, who weren’t surprised.

“You were getting this look on your face,” Sam said. “We figured you’d do something like this.”

“Just remember to bring back souvenirs,” Bucky said.

Carol gave Nick Fury and Natasha a hug, and they both pretended to hate it, but Carol ignored them. She reminded them to use the pager if needed, to which Natasha promptly gave her an intergalactic cell phone. Tony Stark had made it, and Carol was to answer it the moment it rang. She agreed.

The hardest part was saying goodbye to the kids.

The older children wished them luck and told them to be safe even as tears swelled in their eyes. They hugged Valkyrie and then Carol and Steve, and some even dared to hug Loki who stiffened as if children were poisonous to the touch.

The younger kids understood that they were leaving, and some openly cried, but the adults assured them that they would return.

“You’ll barely notice we’re gone,” Valkyrie said.

“Keep practicing, and I’ll play baseball with you when I come back,” Steve promised.

They each took turns holding the babies. They would not be babies much longer — maybe not even when they next returned.

“If you study hard, I’ll take you for a ride on my spaceship again,” Carol said.

Kari was having the hardest time, and Carol, Steve, and Valkyrie boarded the ship to give her and Loki a moment alone. Loki wouldn’t talk about it, but Steve had seen them hug, and his eyes were a little shinier than normal when he boarded.

The four of them crowded into the cockpit — Carol and Valkyrie in the pilot and copilot seats — and they watched as Earth disappeared, and space enveloped them.

“Well, onward, I guess,” Carol said. “Let’s go be heroes.”

Loki and Valkyrie pulled disgusted faces, but Steve smiled.

They weren’t relics of a time passed — they were heroes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading, commenting, leaving kudos, etc.!


End file.
